


Catskin

by NarutoDays (DAYS8)



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Cinderella Elements, Eventual Smut, F/M, Master/Servant, Mutual Pining, Romance, Secret Relationship, Uzushiogakure | Hidden Eddy Village
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-01-15 21:59:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18507898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DAYS8/pseuds/NarutoDays
Summary: She's a nameless girl.  Strange in dress, appearance, and accent in a foreign kingdom.  She stowed away on a merchant ship, running from a certain future much worse than just losing her name.An NH retelling of the fairytale Catskin.Inspired by Tumblr's NaruHina Week 2019 Days 4-7Day 4: PromisesDay 5: FamilyDay 6: ForgottenDay 7: Yesterday





	1. Introduction: Promises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For nhweek2019 Day 4: Promises.

So far, so good.  None of the dinner guests have spoken to her yet, and she hasn’t humiliated herself and her father with her stutters and muffled voice.  She just has to get through dessert, and this awful dinner at the Otsutsuki estate would be over.

She hates these dinners.  

The journey to her distant cousin’s large residence always starts with a lecture from her father.  “Remember your manners, and don’t speak unless you absolutely have to. Your speech impediment is shameful.  Stand up straight!  Be an example for Hanabi. Who can I marry you off to if you carry yourself that way?  Try not to embarrass me.”  

Just remembering it makes her want to sigh and frown.  But she holds it in, careful to only show a serene expression as the men at the table discuss the latest political affairs.  According to rumors, a neighboring province may soon see a change in leadership since the lord wants to pass his duties onto his son.  

“It’s a shame, Hiashi, that Lady Hitomi passed so early.  Certainly you were hoping for an heir,” a tall, reedy man by the name of Yoritomo comments, a veiled jab at the largest of her father’s troubles.  

Her father gives no verbal reply, instead opting for a slow nod of recognition of the man’s words.  

Hinata lowers her eyes to her plate and takes a careful breath.  Her father would be in a foul mood at the end of this dinner, and she might as well start mentally preparing for it now.  Visits to the Otsutsukis always puts her father in a sour temper. None of them seem like good people with the way they gloat and draw attention to themselves.  Especially Yoritomo’s son, Toneri.  By some luck, he’s not present, and that’s been the only highlight of the evening for Hinata.

“Your daughter will be of marrying age soon, correct?” the lord continues.

Hinata looks up, still taking care to not let her dismay show on her face at being mentioned.  

“Yes, she is,” Hiashi responds.  “I have raised her to be capable of supporting her husband in his responsibilities for our kingdom.”

“I see,” Yoritomo replies.

Hinata feels the lord appraising her, his eyes following the lines of her form, and she does her best to keep from shuddering.  She gives him a forced, practiced, small smile.

She immediately regrets it.  The look in his eyes disturbs her.  No one so old as him should be looking at her in that way, and she can only hope there is no meaning to it.

She hoped, but…

After the dinner is over and she is readying to leave, she doesn’t miss the fact that Yoritomo calls her father to his side for a talk.  

A private deal of some sort.

And she finds out, that deal includes her.

“Be glad that he is taking an interest in you.  You will not want for anything at his estate.  You can finally be of some use to our clan,” her father sternly says, not at all noticing, or pretending to not notice, her eyes widen in horror at the news.

She turns her gaze down to the floor and swallows the knot in her throat.  “Yes, Father.”

 

A week later, her maid, a woman of some ancient and unknown age, stuffs her into her tightest dress.  “Toneri is a fine match for you.  You are lucky to be matched with someone as young as he.  Why when I was your age…”

The woman jabbers on, leaving no room for her to air her own opinion, not that there is any air left in her.  

Hinata is certain her breasts will pop out of the bust if the maid tightens her back any further.  

“There!”  The maid pinches her cheeks.  Hard.  “He’ll take one look at you, and you’ll be married in no time!”

And in no time at all, Toneri is at her door.  

She tries to ignore the way his eyes rake over her body.  “Y-you must be tired from your-”

“Sshh.”  Toneri shushes her, placing a finger at her lips.  “Don’t talk. You’re much better without it.”

She can feel her throat closing up in a mixture of embarrassment of herself and disgust in his touch.  

She endures his gazes.  She nods at appropriate times as he recounts his hunting trip from the previous week.  She keeps quiet for his entire visit, not letting on the shrinking, crushed feeling in her gut.

She only lets out a breath of relief when he finally leaves.  

 

A couple of weeks later, a package is delivered to their estate, addressed to her, from the Otsutsukis.  The letter attached reads, “Dearest Hinata, please wear this upon Toneri’s next visit.”

The servants excitedly pull the dress from the box, “ooh”s and “ahh”s filling the air.

It’s stunning, a gown fit for a celebration.

Intricate, delicate, laced threads of silver sweep to the floor in layers.  The bodice glitters in the morning light.  The silver fabric is silky to the touch.  Sparkling silver heels complete the look.

She’s never owned anything so extravagant in her life.  

She dresses in the gown for Toneri, and makes sure to only smile to welcome him.  

He nods approvingly as they take a walk in the gardens.  “Certainly you agree that women should be seen and not heard?”

Hinata turns her practiced, perfect, little smile up toward him, silencing herself.  She tells herself that she’s used to it.  Her voice isn’t anything good to hear anyway.

 

The wedding date is finalized, and with it comes another spectacular gift.

This one of flowing, gold chiffon with silky golden roses adorning the bodice.  Matching soft, golden gloves reach her elbows.

Toneri visits her once more, his eyes falling straight to her rose-lined cleavage.  

She tries to not think about it.  She tries to not show her discomfort in her expression.

But then, he probably wouldn’t notice anyway.

His eyes never stray far from her body.  

It’s when he’s about to leave that he pulls her close, grabbing at her glove-covered wrist with a jerk.  

She nearly stumbles toward him, her body pressing against his, and she lets out a gasp of shock.

“I don’t mind hearing you like that,” he murmurs, before letting her go.

She stands there, still in surprise, her mind working through his words.

He smiles and bids his farewells.

It’s only afterward that she realizes she’s shaking.  Nothing really happened; yet, a cold fear settles within her.  It amasses into horrid denial.  He’s going to touch her.  She would have to let him touch her.  And she doesn’t want it. She doesn’t want to marry him.  She doesn’t want anything to do with him.

 

But by the next gift that’s sent one month before the wedding, she’s resigned.  

She watches the maids pull open the package, revealing a magnificent, deep blue feather gown and a soft feather hairpiece.

She’s certain the ensemble is worth more than herself.

Hanabi whispers thoughts along the same lines to her in private.  “Those dresses must be worth more than our whole estate!  You’re going to be rich!”

Hinata just sighs in response.

Seeing her sister’s melancholy, Hanabi attempts to comfort her.  “Maybe he won’t be so bad when you are actually married…”

Hinata looks at her, lips pursed in disbelief.  “...You know that it will probably be worse.”

Hanabi nods.  “I know he’s awful… I’ll come visit you often?”

She lets another sigh out.  “If he lets me receive visitors.”

“He can’t just hole you up in their castle all day and night!”

“He’ll probably only let me out for fancy parties.”  The dresses are proof enough.  She is expected to be a doll.  One to dress up and for others to admire.  “And even then, I won’t be allowed to speak.  I’ll probably forget what my own voice sounds like.”

Hanabi falls silent at this.  She knows that Hinata has terrible nerves in unfamiliar places or with people she’s not comfortable with.  Her father punishes her for it, but Toneri is worse.  “Hinata…” She wishes she could comfort her sister more.

“I’ll be okay, Hanabi.”  Hinata actually doesn’t believe that at all, but she doesn’t want her younger sister to worry about her.

“It’s _not_ okay!”

“Hanabi…” she warns.

“It’s not okay!!” the younger Hyuuga repeats.  “You shouldn’t have to marry him if you don’t want to!  Doesn’t Father know that he’s creepy?  That whole family is, is,...”  She gesticulates wildly in the air to emphasize her meaning.

“Father doesn’t care.  They’re rich.”  In the past few months, Hinata has come to this understanding of her father’s decision, no matter how much she hates it.  In her internal battle to accept her life’s circumstances, she realized this.  Her father wants to make sure that they are provided for.  If it’s the richest man, even better.  If it means more power for the Hyuuga, then that’s more than he could have asked for.  The Otsutsuki clan offered this to someone like her.  She tries to not think that all of this is because her father hates her.

“...you should run away.”

“...What?”

“You should run away.”  Hanabi nods in affirmation of her own words.  “Take those ridiculously expensive dresses, sell them, and I bet you can make it on your own.”

Hinata gasps.  “I can’t do that!”  

“I would.”  Hanabi stares into her sister’s eyes.  “I wouldn’t accept this.”

“I can’t just leave everyone behind, one month before the wedding.”

She doesn’t let up her stare.  “Yes, you can.”

“I…I couldn’t.  People would recognize me.”

“Just disguise yourself.”

“Wi-with what?”

“I don’t know!  A potato bag, a skirt of wood, a coat of cat skin!  I bet if you asked the Otsutsukis for a coat of cat’s fur they’d sew it for you!”

Hinata grimaces at the suggestions.  “No, they wouldn’t!”

“I bet they would.  They are _obsessed_ with you.”

“No...they’re not…” she denies with a frown, though she wonders now if that’s how it appears to others.

Her sister hums in disagreement.  “Toneri is visiting tomorrow, right?  You can ask him for anything and he’d get it for you just to prove that he can.”

“He doesn’t even let me speak,” Hinata points out.  “But no, I wrote the Otsutsukis to ask for this month with my family.  I won’t have to see him until...the wedding.”

Hanabi appears thoughtful for a moment, and then smiles.  Mischievously.

“What is that face for?” Hinata asks accusingly.  She has no idea how her younger sister is so good at hiding her personality from their father.  The two girls are definitely nothing alike aside from their eyes.

“Oh nothing.  I just had a thought.”

 

A week later, _it_ appears.  The maids murmur in excitement, hurrying to unwrap the latest gift.  

But instead of sighs and gasps of wonder, the garment is met with furrowed expressions.  

“Lady Hinata, the Otsutsukis have sent you...a coat.  What kind of fur is this, I wonder,” a servant says thoughtfully.  

There is no doubt in Hinata’s mind.  It’s cat skin.  Short brown fur with stripes and spots of black.  Effort is apparent in the neat stitching, but it can’t hide the fact that it is _peculiar_.  

“Perhaps it is the latest fashion in Konoha?” suggests a maid.

“Yes, perhaps it is,” others comment.

Hinata looks at it silently, knowing that it would be more accurate to say only someone like Hanabi could ever imagine something so revolting.  She slips it on.

The maids try not to grimace.

Hinata tries not to look surprised.  She can imagine it.  If she lets her hair down to cover herself up, if she wears this coat that obscures all her curves, if she wears her plain petticoats, and if she runs far, far away…

She shrugs the coat off, along with the daydream.  She can’t run away. That would be ridiculous.

 

However as the day draws ever closer, she feels her freedom slipping away with it.  She takes to walking in their gardens with Hanabi every late afternoon.  The coat sits in her closet, a reminder of her sister’s silly suggestion--a mockery of her circumstances.

 

It’s two days before the wedding, and the sisters take an excursion together into town to enjoy their last hours together.  

The stores are bustling with shoppers, and the two link arms to keep from separating in the crowd.  

“Wow, the shipments must have just arrived!  It’s so busy today,” Hinata remarks.

“Yeah!  Hey, I’ve been meaning to look at the new patterns-”

“Hanabi!” a voice shouts.

The girl stiffens, her expression shifting into a forced frown.  “Quick, let’s go!”

But Hinata notes the telltale glimmer in her sister’s eyes.  She looks around in curiosity.

“Hanabi!”

Hinata side-eyes her blushing sister, who’s doing her best to pull Hinata along.  “Isn’t that-”

A boy pushes through the crowd and stops before them.

“Konohamaru,” Hanabi finishes, her voice deadpan, completely different from the flustered girl of a second ago.  “What is it, can’t you see I’m busy with my sister?”

The boy just grins.  He nods in recognition to Hinata and then Hanabi.  “It’s nice to see you, too,” he jokes.  His expression turns sly.  “I just thought I’d get a good look at this rare picture.”

“Wha-” Hanabi begins.

“Who knew your father would ever let a wild animal like you out of the house.”

Hanabi’s expression twists in frustration.  “How dare you!” She quickly re-composes herself.  “I am a perfect picture of virtue, I’ll have you know.  So take a good look.”

It’s obvious to anyone watching their exchanged banter that the two are a match meant to be.  The Sarutobi heir comes from a prestigious clan, yet their values are less restrictive compared to the Otsutsukis.  It’s assumed that Konohamaru will get to choose who he marries. And it’s obvious where his attentions are.

Less known are Hanabi’s feelings on the matter.  But based off of what she had just seen, Hinata takes a guess that her sister is hiding more than she’s letting on.

She’s happy for her younger sister.  Happy that at least one of them can have a happy ending.  The only thing is that...

“Congratulations on your engagement, Hinata,” Konohamaru says, turning his charming smile toward her.  “Toneri, huh?”

She nods.  “Thank you.”  

He nods.

She gives a fake smile.  There’s not much more to say about that.  Everyone in the province knows what he’s like.

He shifts subjects again quickly, engaging Hanabi in another conversation.  Almost every sentence he says leaves room for Hanabi to voice her own thoughts, whether agreements, laughter, rebuttals, or scoffs.

Hinata passively listens.  She wishes Toneri could be like that.  

Except that’s not for her.

Not for socially awkward, shy Hinata.  Not for the girl who’s known for stumbling over her words, for slouching too much, for standing in the background.  Even if she grew out of most of those behaviors in the last few years, no one forgets.

But if she runs away...to someplace far, far away...where nobody knows her Hyuuga eyes...

She watches Hanabi and Konohamaru.  She can see the mutual interest, two souls drawing closer together.  

Her sister would be fine without her…if she ran away…

 

“Go.”  Hanabi states as the two stand at the edge of their father’s estate.  “Don’t worry about me and go.”

“Hanabi…”

“If you don’t leave tonight, you won’t get another chance.  You can leave with the merchants.  You can board their ships tonight and-”

“I can’t just-”

“Yes, you _can_.  I don’t think I can stand seeing you next to Toneri like some silent puppet.”

Hinata shakes her head.

“I’m not joking.  I know the cat coat seems like it was a joke, but I did all of that in complete seriousness!”

Hinata stares at her sister.

“Please, Hinata.  If not for yourself, do it for me...I don’t want Toneri for a brother-in-law.”  

Hinata sighs.  She can’t lie to herself.  She’s been thinking about running away nonstop.  And now, two nights before the wedding, the fates seem to have aligned for her.  The merchants’ ships always leave first thing in the morning after deliveries.  She can board them and disappear.  She can seek something better for herself.  She can start over as someone new.

She squeezes her younger sister in a tight embrace.  “Oh, Hanabi…”

Her sister hugs her back.  “Don’t worry about me.  I’ll be fine.  And I won’t give you away.”

Hinata knows this is the truth.  Hanabi is a quick thinker.  Always the clever one.  She could make an amazing actress if she wanted.  “I’ll come back for you.”

“No, promise me you won’t come back.”

Hinata sucks in a breath.  “...I...I promise.”

“Promise me you’ll be safe.”

She nods against her sister’s head.  “I promise I’ll be safe.”

“Promise me you’ll find something better than this.”

She inhales deeply, memorizing the scent of Hanabi’s favorite perfume of sweet freesia.  A resolve, a hope she never quite felt before rises within her.  The power in… “I promise.”

 

She packs an unassuming bag, the gowns that are worth more than herself folded tightly and only a few of her plainest dresses stuffed within.  She dons the ugly coat; she lets her hair down.  In the dark, she blends in like a creature of the night.  She casts her eyes down the way she used to as a small child when she manages to catch a ride back into town.  

The taverns are noisy with sailors.  The docks are quiet.

She sneaks aboard a ship and tucks herself away amidst the largest crates.

Nerves keep her awake.

Doubt settles into her.  

It’s not too late.  She can still go home.  She can still make it back before anyone notices.  She could go back to everything familiar.  She could marry Toneri and still have her family a short ride away.

But she promised.

So she stays where she is, her gut turning in worried anticipation.  

First light streams through tiny cracks in the ceiling.

Reality sets in when she hears numerous footsteps on the deck.  

She’s sealed her own fate.

She can only hope it’s all for the better.

She promised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually wanted to submit the whole story for Day 4's prompt Lies. But I didn't have time to write the whole thing :( As you'll see later, lies are an interesting part of this fairy tale.  
> So...
> 
> Thank you for reading! The next chapter will be up tomorrow.


	2. Family/Forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NHweek2019 Days 5 & 6, Forgotten, Family.
> 
> Please enjoy the NaruHina!

“Hey, who’s that?!”  A voice shouts at her in the dark of the night.  “Stop!”

She runs faster.  Harder.

She managed to get off the ship when the clouds covered the moon, but this town has a heavily secured port.  

Voices of a different inflection, accents and strange phrases of this new region’s dialect, yell out at her only some paces behind.

She twists around a corner.  Harsh breaths saw out of her burning lungs.  She considers dropping her bag.  She holds it tighter.  

She runs around another corner, her eyes squeezing shut as she presses forward.  Her heart thunders a desperate prayer for escape.   _Please, please, no, no, no._  She turns another building.  

She slams into a body, sending both of them crashing to the ground.  She frantically gets off of the person.  “Oh, oh, I’m so sorry, oh no,” she breathes out, hearing shouts behind her.  She attempts to grab her bag, intent to keep running.

The person grabs her wrist.

“P-please, I’m s-sorry,” she gasps out, fear running through her at her impending capture.  She looks down, finally looking face-to-face with the person she so rudely crashed into.

Startlingly red eyes.  A beautiful woman. The woman gets up and dusts herself off, her red eyes glancing toward the sounds.  She looks directly at her.  “Don’t worry,” she whispers.

“H-huh?” Hinata asks in confusion.  She’s breathing hard.  Her legs feel like jelly.  And she realizes that she probably can’t run anymore now that she stopped for too long.

The woman takes her bag.  She quickly runs her hands through Hinata’s hair, brushing the strands behind her ears.

Hinata’s gasping for breath.  “W-what…”

“Calm down, deep breaths, pretend with me,” the woman whispers.

“W-wha-”

The woman presses her forehead to hers, taking deep breaths.

A couple of seconds in, Hinata begins to catch onto her rhythm, and as soon as she starts to keep pace, the woman pulls away.

“Walk with me.”  She links her arm around Hinata’s and they walk straight back around the corner from where Hinata came from.

The guards are running directly at them, and the woman pulls Hinata to the side.

The guards run around the building, ignoring them.

The woman pulls her along.  “Don’t look back, don’t stop,” she whispers.  

Hinata registers the sound of running coming back toward them.  

“Honestly, you would think we would have found a place to stay by now.  How can all of these rooms be so expensive?” the woman suddenly starts talking.  

Hinata glances at her, realization slowly coming through her adrenaline-rushed mind.  She nods carefully.

“Let’s try here.”  

“O-okay,” Hinata responds as the woman pulls her into an inn.  

They head straight for the stairs, and the woman rushes her up, pulling out keys in the process.  The woman pushes her into the third floor, and they walk quickly to a door, which the woman unlocks.

She shuts it behind them, locks it, and then turns to face Hinata.

Hinata stands there in the entrance of the room, staring at the door, half-expecting someone to come pounding on it.

“You’re safe,” the woman says quietly.

She lets out a gasp of relief she didn’t realize she was holding.  She leans against the wall, and blinks rapidly.  She’s shaking.  “Th-thank you.  Thank you so much,” she gasps out.

The woman shakes her head in a gesture of modesty.  “You don’t sound like you’re from around here,” she wonders aloud.

 _Where is here?_  She doesn’t voice her question.  She doesn’t want to give too much about herself away.  The less conversation, the better.  She shakes her head, “I’m not…”

The woman raises a brow, waiting for her to elaborate.

Hinata makes a show of catching her breath.  She tries to change the subject.  “I don’t know how to repay you for your help.”

The woman doesn’t reply to that, knowing that the foreigner is avoiding her question.  She instead guides the girl further into the room, offering her a seat.  “I was once like you.  Landing where ever I happened to fall.”

Hinata looks up sincerely at her.  “I’m so sorry about that, running into you like that.  I’ve caused you so much trouble.  Thank you for rescuing me.”

She smiles kindly.  “Tell me, what’s your name.”

“Hina-”  She stops herself in shock.  She shuts her mouth and averts her gaze to the floor.  With the way things are going, she’ll be shipped back to Konoha in no time at all.

“...Well, Hina, you’re not any trouble to me.  I was in the right place at the right time.”

Hinata looks up at the woman in awe.  She seems so genuinely kind.

“You can call me Kurenai.”

“Kurenai…”  Hinata is still amazed by the beautiful woman before her.  “Thank you.”

“Did you come in with the ships?”

Hinata nods silently.

“Do you know where you are?”

She shakes her head.

“You’re in Uzushio.”

Her eyes widen.   _Uzushio_.  A neighboring kingdom to Hinokuni, famous for its whirlpools, summer monsoons, exotic pearls, and blood-red hair.  She remembers her geography studies. Stretches of the world’s tallest and coldest mountains on one side. Mysterious oceans on the other.  Although the kingdom is relatively small, the land is prosperous and safe. No invasion has yet been successful and the Uzumaki clan has reigned peacefully since time unknown.  Close familial ties with the ruling Senju clan of Hinokuni solidified secret ocean trade routes navigated only by Uzushio’s experienced seamen.

She never dreamed she’d come to this closed-off nation.  

Maybe she’d be safe here.  No one would ever think to find her here.

“If you want, you can come with me.  I can give you work.  And a place to stay.”

Hinata stares at Kurenai suspiciously.  It’s much too fortuitous to be true.  “W-why would you do that for me?”

Kurenai looks at her with a smile.  “Is there a reason I shouldn’t?”

“W-well...you don’t know me at all…and I...I can’t...”

“I understand that there are things you cannot share with me now.  But I was once like you.  Scared and alone in a new place, and my employers took me in.  I feel like I’m being given the chance to pay it forward now.”

Hinata bites her lips and nods.  “Thank you,” she whispers.  She doesn’t know what the work is, but she’ll take anything.  

Kurenai gives her another warm smile.  “For now, get some rest.  We’ll be heading out in the morning.”

Hinata nods, realizing only now that she’s so tired, she feels she could sleep for days.

 

When they go down from Kurenai’s room in the morning, a carriage is already waiting for them.

The coachman and Kurenai greet each other cheerily.  “I thought it would be just you this morning.  Who’s this you have with you?”  

“A new-hire,” Kurenai answers easily.

“I-it’s nice to meet you,” Hinata greets quietly.

The coachman nods in greeting, and Hinata is struck by the seeming rudeness, only to realize that she’s a nobody here.  No one knows her father.  No one knows her Hyuuga eyes.  She’s lower than a servant.  She’s currently a jobless, nameless _nobody_.

And just like that, as they ride through the awakening, busying town, she realizes, she’s _free_.  She doesn’t know what she’s gotten herself into, but she’s free of her father.  Free of his expectations.  Free of Toneri.

Toneri.  She should have been married to him yesterday.  She should have shared vows with him.  She should have worn a white gown more expensive than herself.  She should have shared his bed last night.  She should have felt his unwanted hands on her body and lost her innocence.  She should have cried by herself in the dark of the night.

But she didn’t.  

She is still herself.  She is still her _own_ self.  No one’s belonging to put away, no one’s doll to dress up, and no one’s puppet without a voice.  

And yet, she feels like she’s missing something.  Or rather, someone.  Hanabi.  Her fingers clench at the ugly coat.  Her only possession to remind her of her sister.

And her strange sense of humor.  That somehow inspired all of this to happen.

She looks out at the town.  People of brown, black, green, and blonde hair hurry along the streets.  There are a few redheads here and there, too, but not the sea of red she had always imagined from the texts she read.  She can fit in here.  No one would ever find her.

In the long carriage ride that eventually takes them through fields and forests, she worries about her sister, whether she’s okay, whether everything is alright at home.  Whether her father is worried about her, whether he’s searching for her, whether she’s brought shame on her family name _again_.  

She smiles a bit in a warped sense of amusement.  It would be for the last time.  She’d never bring shame on the Hyuuga again.  Her father would never have to worry about her staining his honor and pride _ever_ again.

She’s disappeared.

She’s starting over.   

 

They pull into a magnificent estate, the walls of the castle a gorgeous white stone.  

She quickly realizes what she hadn’t thought about earlier.  She’s to be a servant.  For a lord’s family.  She almost wants to laugh at the irony.  Everything she had thrown away for a life of freedom, she would now have to see from the other side.

Yet, she feels like this is perfect.  She knows to a great extent the responsibilities of ruling a province and the workings of daily life in prominent clans.  She even knows how to behave as a servant.  The tone she will have to use, the postures she will need to assume when in the same room as the family members.  Everything else, the cleaning, the cooking, the manual labor...hopefully Kurenai or whoever her head maid is, will give her time to learn and adjust.

She looks out at the grounds.  Exquisitely manicured gardens.  Towering hedges that hint at hidden, private gardens that would be perfect for reading in the late mornings.  “Wow,” she breathes.  They appear almost as rich as the Otsutsukis.  For all she knows, maybe even more.  The Otsutsukis had a penchant for boasting.

“This is the Namikaze estate.  You will be serving Lady Kushina Uzumaki and Lord Minato Namikaze.  They have one son, Master Naruto.”

She nods, memorizing their names.  It strikes her again, the strangeness of her new status.  She’ll have to address their son as “Master” or “Sir,” even if he’s years younger than her.  She’s never had to do that.  She can’t imagine ever calling someone like Konohamaru “Master.”  

Or worse.  Serving someone like Toneri and calling him “Master.”  She mentally shudders.  She was almost sentenced to a life of serving him, albeit in a different capacity.

She hopes the Namikaze family isn’t anything like the Otsutsukis.  She even hopes they aren’t like her own family.

They exit the carriage, and Kurenai takes her to the servants’ quarters for her to leave her bag.  She only saw the servants’ quarters at her own home once when she accidentally wandered about the estate as a young girl.  She was then harshly reprimanded.

She’s pleasantly surprised to find that she’ll have her own room.  Even if it is small, it’s all that she needs.  She probably won’t be staying in her room too often anyway.  She deposits her bag in her tiny closet, hoping that no one goes through her belongings.  None of the rooms have locks.

Kurenai shows her around the laundry, the kitchens, the dining room, the unobtrusive servants’ halls and stairs that she must use when the family hosts parties.  

She takes it all in with a bit of guilty fascination.  It’s like she gets to explore all the “secret” places she wanted to sneak into when she was a child.  She knows the novelty of it will wear off eventually when this truly becomes her way of life, when her previous high status is nothing but a distant memory.

Kurenai introduces her to many people along the way, and the names begin to blur together.  What she doesn’t forget is the startled look they try to hide upon meeting her eyes. Then the slight twitch of the brows when they see her coat.  

She shadows another maid for the rest of the day and generally tries to stay out of the way.

When she finally lies down for bed, she has trouble falling asleep.  

A new country.  A new home.  A new bed.  A new role.

Despite everything, things turned out far better than she could have ever imagined.  She can only hope her positive anticipation isn’t wrong.

 

The first weeks in the castle pass uneventfully.  She wakes at 5:00 and reports for duty at 5:30. As a newbie, she stays out of sight of the Namikazes until she’s proved to the head maids that she won’t make a scene of herself.  She does the laundry, washes the dishes, and helps with the shopping and meal-prep.  She settles into a comfortable routine and camaraderie with the other maids as they discuss remedies for their water-chafed skin.  Negative comments on her foreign speech patterns, her eyes, her clothes (they don’t know it would be strange anywhere), are few and far between.  She sticks to her timid and humble behaviors, finding that the veteran maids treat her more nicely that way.

At some point, she gains the nickname Bucchi*.  It’s an ugly-cute name, and she finds that she doesn’t mind it as much as she probably thinks she should.  The new name makes her feel like she can forget her past.  No longer Hinata, no longer following the tradition of the Hyuuga naming customs.  The nickname instead recalls the cat skin coat she dons over her uniform.  The castle is always drafty, and all the maids wear some sort of coat or shawl.

Bucchi.  It sounds like a name Hanabi would love.  So in a way, the nickname charms her, too.  She starts introducing herself this way when she meets someone she’s never worked with before.  She’s not the only one with a peculiar nickname and a hidden past.

 

One early afternoon, she lines up with the rest of the maids to report for their duties for the remainder of the day.  That morning, she was assigned to the scullery.  According to the cycle of schedules, it’s likely she’ll be folding the linens.  

“Hina, you will be dusting and shelving in the Eastern Wing’s library.”  Kurenai is the only one who calls her by her “real” name.

“The library?” she repeats, just to make sure.  She’s only been out in the open once before when the Namikazes took a trip down South.  Right now they are all at home in preparation for a visit from cousins.  The possibility is much higher that she might finally see her employers, and after working there for six weeks, she is truly curious.  She has heard of Lord Minato’s wisdom.  She has heard of Lady Kushina’s excitable temper.  She even actually heard the lady’s shrill voice through the halls once.  And though she doesn’t really care to admit it, she’s most curious about the young lord Naruto.  Supposedly he is around her age from what she could gather of the gossip surrounding his daily life.

“Yes, in the Eastern Wing.”

She follows three other more veteran maids, and she feels herself oddly shrinking inward when they step out into the open halls.  It doesn’t feel as bad as the first time, but she has this strange sense of dissonance, like she doesn’t belong, or like she’s fooling everyone.  Taking the servants’ passageways and staying in the background lets her feel like she’s living a different life, and most of the time, she truly forgets her past life.  Walking through the serene open corridors and the grand staircases just makes her feel…

 _Do I miss it?_ , she wonders.  Does she miss the luxury?  Does she miss the comforts of the upper social class?...

Entering the library makes her realize that she does.  Shelves and shelves of books stretch from the floor to the ceiling.  A staircase leads to an upper landing of even more books.  Tables and comfortable armchairs are spaced here and there, and natural light streams in through a tall window.  She has the sudden urge to explore all the books, to tuck herself into a corner, and read for the rest of the afternoon.

Of course she doesn’t.  

She sets to work with the other women, dusting covers and replacing books where they belong.  Many of the titles interest her, and she wonders if she might ever be allowed to peruse them on a day off.  She would have to be sneaky about it.  She realized on a day out shopping with the girls that many of the maids do not have her level of literacy.

She goes up to the second floor, rounds a shelf, only to stop in surprise.

A young man with bright blonde hair sits passed out on a chair, a thick book open in his lap.  Other books are haphazardly spread out on the table before him.  A notebook holds the topics of his studies, in decidedly not the best penmanship she’s ever seen.  

He appears peaceful.  Completely asleep.

 _Naruto_.  She knows it must be him.  She looks at him in curiosity.

He definitely looks her age.  Maybe even a little older.  Tan skin balances masculine features, completely unlike the lords of Konoha with their fair skin and aristocratic cheekbones.  He’s not at all what she imagined he would look like, considering the sighs the maids her age give when he’s mentioned.

His head suddenly drops forward, the strain on his neck snapping his eyes open.

She startles, slipping between the shelves.  She rushes back toward one of the other maids she’s gone out with on previous occasions.  “Shizuka?” she whispers.  “I-I believe I just saw Master Naruto in the corner.”

The maid’s eyes widen.  “Really?”

“Yes, do you think we should stop-”

Before she could even ask if they should stop dusting, Shizuka rushes away toward where Hinata came from.

Hinata stands there for a second in confusion before following reluctantly.  Their voices reach her ears as she peeks around the shelf.

“Master Naruto, good afternoon,” the dark-haired girl greets politely with a bow.

“Oh, hi, Shizuka,” he replies.  He gives a large yawn, stretching his arms and adjusting his position.  

 _He knows her name_ , she marvels.  Even she didn’t know all the names of the servants in her household.  And like her, Shizuka isn’t a personal maid, but rather is in charge of more menial tasks.  She only knew the names of her personal maids and the top officers.  She’s amazed at Shizuka, too.  The staff never just came up to her.  They waited to be summoned, bowed silently, stood still before her family in strict obedience.

“Are you in need of anything?” Shizuka asks.

The young lord grins cheekily.  “You think you can help me with my work?” he asks jokingly.

“Oh Master Naruto,” Shizuka giggles back, shaking her head.  

Hinata is absolutely astounded by the exchange.  She never joked with the servants.  She was forced to be separate from them.  

The young man suddenly stands up, stretching once more.  He walks out into the main floor of the library, and Shizuka follows behind him.  The two other maids turn from their work and go up to him, greeting him and asking him about his day so far.

Hinata watches them talk and joke from a distance, more and more shocked to find that he knows their names, too.  Eventually he steps back, saying (more like complaining) how he needs to get back to reading, and the maids bow, wishing him good luck and complimenting him on his work ethic.

Hinata comes out from the shelves when it finally seems safe to show herself, and just as she thought they would, they all leave the library so as not to bother him.  

She doesn’t realize that the man of her silent observation saw her through the books, surprised that there was a fourth girl there.

The maids gush, even the two middle-aged ones, about his charm.

“Bucchi, why didn’t you come out to introduce yourself?” Shizuka asks.

“...oh, um, I thought I would be disturbing him,” she quietly replies.

“The young master isn’t like that!” another maid says to the other two’s agreements.

 

And as she is given more responsibilities that take her around the castle, especially with the extended family visiting that weekend, she finds out that he really isn’t.  He talks with anyone who happens to be around, seemingly uncaring about social status, even in front of his family members.  She comes to understand the doting nature all of the staff have on the only Namikaze son.  His blatant disregard for rules was at first shocking to her.  And then she could only describe it as charming.  He has a way with words and spinning stories that enthralls.

But she doesn’t speak to him.  She shies away from his line of view or hides until he is gone, afraid.  She’s not exactly sure of what it is about him that scares her.  She thinks that it might be that despite his differences, he still symbolizes her past.  A past that she’s desperately trying to forget.  When she spots him wearing his riding clothes, or his sword-sparring uniform, or even his casual clothes, it reminds her of two of her closest male cousins Neji and Ko.  

She wonders if in the years and decades to follow, her memories of her family will eventually lay forgotten.  It’s bittersweet.  As much as she hated being Hyuuga, why now does she miss it so?...

 

Her determination to stay away from him backfires.  

On one morning, when a blonde, personal maid of Naruto’s by the name of Shion reports in sick, Hinata learns that Shion specifically requested that she take her place for the day.

Shizuka shakes her head, murmuring to Hinata that Shion is a jealous girl.  “Try not to act too uncomfortable around Master Naruto.”  Everyone seems to notice Bucchi’s reluctance to get close to the aristocratic family.  Shizuka doesn’t mention to her that she was also likely requested due to her somewhat strange and ragged appearance.

“I’ll try,” she responds quietly.

“He could take offense to it.  He prides himself on social skills.”

She nods seriously.  The last thing she wants to do is upset her employers.  She just wants the day to pass quickly.

“All a personal maid has to do is assist with his dressing and toiletries, so stay near his bedchambers.”

She nods.  “Okay.”  She knew this already, but everyone just thinks she’s a fast learner in the ways of the household.  “Thank you, Shizuka.”

 

She goes with his other personal maid, a much older woman, Kimiko, who instructs her to help prepare his bath.  She carefully fills a container of water and carries it to the baths. It’s hard work, being careful not to spill any water in the trips back-and-forth, and Hinata realizes she never truly appreciated her servants at home.  She thanked them politely, but she never really, _really_ understood the work.  If she ever returns to Konoha, she would thank them properly…

She sighs.  

“Hey, let me help you with that.”

She abruptly turns to see the young master dressed in a robe, standing at the side, looking ready to rush to her aid.

Her eyes widen, and she immediately ducks her head, embarrassed.  “M-Master Naruto!”  She hurries to the tub.  “I-I’m fine, thank you.  Please don’t bother yourself with me.”  She pours the water in, glad that it was the last one, and that she won’t tarnish her reputation by having him help her.  She gets the feeling he’s someone who follows through on his offers.

“Thank you.  I know that’s a lot of work.  I usually help Shion, but it looks like you finished already.  Sorry about that.”  He brushes the back of his neck, looking like the embarrassed one.  

“O-oh no, sir!  It was no problem at all.  I-I was thinking about something else…Please don’t bother yourself with me.”  She steps slowly to exit the room and allow Kimiko to help with his bathing.

“Oh yeah?  About what?” he asks easily, knowingly stopping her escape.  The maids weren’t the only one who noticed the bluenette slipping away in his presence.

She freezes.  “N-nothing, sir.”  She stands still, awkwardly waiting for him to dismiss her.  She’s only ever seen her father in his bathing robe. She’s never seen another man like this.  As a maid, who should have come from a way of life less sheltered, she shouldn’t be conscious about this, but...unfortunately...

He smiles.  “You’re new, right?  What’s your name?”

She keeps her head bowed, partially in a gesture of respect, partially to hide her discomfort.  “...They call me Bucchi, sir.”

He quirks a brow at the strange name, understanding that it’s in reference to her equally strange coat, but he knows she’s not the only one in the staff who goes by an alias.  “Bucchi, huh?”  He chuckles as he sees her skin color pink.  “Well, Bucchi, thank you for filling in for Shion.  I know she was sick yesterday.  How is she doing?”

Hinata raises her eyes slightly, amazed that he’s so concerned with them.  “S-she is getting better, Master Naruto.  I know she is intent on returning to work as soon as she is able.  I will do my best in her place today, sir.”

His eyes widen at seeing _her eyes_.  He had never gotten a good look at her face, with her long dark hair like a curtain, and even now she was hiding her face from him.  Her seemingly pupil-less eyes immediately turned down again, and he finds himself curious for another look, unsure of what he saw.  _She isn’t blind, is she?_  “You don’t have to bother yourself with formalities around me, Bucchi.  I consider everyone in this household a part of my family, even if you all insist on the titles.”

She stares at the floor in surprise.   _What a strange way of thinking!_   “...I-I don’t mind at all, Master Naruto,” she manages to reply, not knowing what else to say at his declaration.

To his disappointment, she doesn’t look at him again.  He frowns slightly, wondering why she acts this way with him, but he decides not to push it, realizing that he really does make her uncomfortable.  

Kimiko enters the room.  “Is everything alright, Master Naruto?”

“Oh, yes.  Thank you, Bucchi.”

“It was my pleasure, sir.”  The young maid bows and exits.

He watches her leave.

“Please excuse, Bucchi, Master Naruto.  She is a very timid girl.  I hope she did not do anything to displease you?”

“No, not at all.  She filled the tub by herself so quickly.”

“She is a hard worker and takes her job seriously,” Kimiko responds as she helps him prepare for his bath.

“...I can tell.  You all work so hard for my family.  Thank you.”

“We are proud to be a part of the Namikazes' continued success.”

 

Hinata takes a deep breath once she exits the room.  No lord has ever given her so much attention or actually talked _to_ her, not _at_ her.  And he was in his bathrobes.  The entire exchange was much too intense and unexpected for her.  She wasn’t at all prepared for it.  She was hoping to fill his bath before he entered, but she had no such luck.  

Thankfully, it turns out he has a busy day.  He dresses quickly with Kimiko’s aid, politely thanks them, and rushes out without engaging her in another intense conversation.

That night, Kimiko does most of the talking, and the young lord doesn’t force her to join the conversation.  Whenever she notices his gaze turning toward her, she bows her head, an excuse to avoid eye contact with his unwavering blue.  

Thankfully, Shion is fully recovered the next day, and eagerly resumes her duties.  

But that night, she returns to the servant’s quarters, looking dramatically heartbroken.  She announces to the maids, that includes Hinata, “Guess what Master Naruto told us tonight?”

The women gather around, always eager to hear a story about the young lord.  

“They’re going to host a ball!  To find him a bride!”

“A bride?!” the women echo, in alternating voices of excitement or dismay.

“He says he wants to enjoy his youth longer, but Lord Minato and Lady Kushina are forcing him to settle down,” she adds.

The women titter and comment fondly on the young master’s playfulness.

“Well, it is about time he starts courting someone.  He hasn’t paid attention to any young women as far as I know.  I think a ball is certainly necessary,” Kimiko informs, and they all nod, respecting the personal maid’s long years of experience with him.

“When is the ball?” one asks.

“In three weeks!” Shion answers.

“It’s going to get really busy around here,” Shizuka whispers to Hinata.

“T-there will probably be many guests, won’t there?” Hinata asks.

Shizuka nods.  “The Namikazes like to host lavish parties.”

Hinata nods seriously, as if she has never been to a lavish party.  

But she has.  

And quite contrary to her shy personality, she enjoys them.  Once she grew a little out of her shell, she found she enjoyed dancing, which gave her something to do in the presence of others.  Young lords curious about her never knew what to say to her, but they enjoyed dancing with her.  Her father wasn’t as worried about her when they went to dances.  His lectures were less stern.  Dinner parties were just another story.

Saying goodnight to Shizuka, she heads to her room.  She wants to forget her past.  She doesn’t want to remember what she liked about it.  She’ll never have it back after all.

“Hina.”

She blinks to her side, seeing Kurenai walking in pace with her.  “Yes, Kurenai?”

The woman’s gaze is analytical, and Hinata tilts her head in confusion.

They stop in front of her room.

“I-is something the matter?”

Kurenai enters her room, pulls open her closet completely, and gestures at the dresses she hung up and promptly ignored, the glittering fabric shining even in the dark.  “...Do you care to explain these?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Bucchi means "tabby" in Japanese. 
> 
> In the original fairy tale, the heroine is given the nickname Catskin, but I think it's weird to have both English and Japanese names in a story for consistency's sake. Cat skin or cat fur in Japanese is "Neko no kawa," which is just too long and literal to rationalize as a nickname.
> 
> Anyway, that's enough about my translation issues xD Next chapter will be up as soon as I can write it for Day 7!
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


	3. Dreams/Yesterday

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For NHweek 2019 Days 6 & 7: Dreams, Yesterday
> 
> Please enjoy the NaruHina!

Hinata stares at the gowns, the memory of wearing them, the memory of Toneri’s grip pulling her, him invading her space, his eyes violating her.  Her lip tightens and she swallows back the rising sense of shame.

“Tell me how you came into possession of these.  Are these yours or our Lady’s?” Kurenai questions.  She has never seen Lady Kushina in such gowns.  They seem much too flashy for a married woman.  “Or are they Lady Karin’s?”  It’s possible the maid stole them when the family came to visit, though they don’t exactly seem like Lady Karin’s style, either.  For such elaborate gowns to go missing, Lady Karin would have thrown a loud tantrum, but the family left in good humour.

“Kurenai...they are mine,” she whispers.  

“How can I believe you?  How do I know you didn’t steal them?”  She believes her, but...it’s still hard to believe.  Who is this girl she saved from certain capture and imprisonment?

Hinata takes a steady breath.  She gathers her hair to the side, twisting it as if to tie it up into an elaborate updo.  She lets her hair go.  She draws herself up into the confident, impeccable, regal posture of a fine lady.  She holds her chin higher and gives Kurenai her practiced, small smile.

Kurenai’s eyes widen.  

She quickly drops it, sinking back into her comfortable posture.  She then explains quietly, “I brought them with me when I left home...I was planning to sell them for money to sustain myself until I found steady work.  Since you saved me, I didn’t have use for them anymore…”

Kurenai gazes at her, wanting to unravel the girl’s secret past.  Hina was apparently the daughter of a rich lord.  What would force her to run away?  “...Fortunately for you, I believe you.  You are a hard worker.  I won’t force you to tell me about your circumstances, but I do wonder...has it been worth it?”

Hinata looks at Kurenai in surprise at the question.  

Kurenai’s expression is one of care and worry.

She nods.  “Yes, although I must admit I miss some facets of my old life…”   _My sister_.  “...Everything here has been perfect for me.  Truly, thank you for everything, Kurenai.”

Kurenai shakes her head.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

She hangs her head and after a moment of thought, she nods.  It’s stifling to keep such a huge secret.

“Come.”  Kurenai guides her to the bed, and they both take a seat on it in the tiny room.

Hinata doesn’t give away anything about her home, her awful engagement, or any names, but she talks about her sister.  How the idea to run away was her sister’s, how the strange catskin coat is her only possession to remind her of her sister, and how she worries about her sister’s wellbeing.

Kurenai listens.  She doesn’t ask any questions.  She shares about her own life, how she came as a teenager to Uzushio as a part of a freak show due to her witch’s red eyes.  How a young Lady Kushina saw her and immediately sympathized.  How she was bought from the circus and subsequently employed at their household.  

It’s not until late when Kurenai bids her goodnight, and despite her tiredness, Hinata realizes she’s never felt quite so _rested_.  It feels good to have someone she can trust know about her past.  And it feels nice to learn more about the person who saved her.

 

The days fly by quickly as everyone prepares for the ball.  Hinata helps with seemingly everything.  Preparing the bedding, the linens, the dishware, the meals, the candles, the work is endless.  

She remembers the last time her family hosted a grand celebration.  It had been a little over a year after her mother had passed, in an effort for the Hyuuga family to appear still-functioning.  It was a large affair, but her father had been so unhappy throughout it all.  It wasn’t the same without her mother.  Hinata doesn’t remember the work that went into it.  She only remembers the material she helped choose for a new gown and the dress Hanabi wore.  She only remembers the dancing and her father’s silent expression.

She knows from later gatherings that other families would stress out about the choosing of the invitations, the linens, the menu.  It seems silly to her now.  The servants always did all the work.  It’s more like the servants are the ones throwing a party.

She shakes her head and sighs now at her past frivolity.  So much work and they don’t get to enjoy it.  They’ll be working all night...

But no one complains.  Although the work is more, the servants seem motivated.  The older maids more knowledgeable of the lords and ladies make bets about possible matches with the young master.  The castle comes alive as decorations and flowers are brought in, and the proud sight seems to cheer everyone up.

 

The day arrives, and the castle is abuzz with excitement.  Close relatives arrive in the morning, but Hinata is not high enough up in ranks to wait on them.  

When the sun begins to set, and new guests start to arrive, she carefully walks along the perimeters with Shizuka and a few other young maids, lighting candles and straightening floral arrangements.  As soon as they finish, they head back down toward the kitchens for further instruction.

But Shizuka grabs her arm.  “Come with me,” she whispers.

“O-okay.”  Hinata lets her friend pull her along.  

They head down to the servants’ quarters, and she sees Kurenai with a candle, waiting for them.  Perhaps they have some sort of special duty?

Kurenai guides her to her room, and her brows furrow, finding them flanking her on both sides.  “W-what’s going…”

Kurenai pulls open her closet again.

“...on?”

“Wow!” Shizuka breathes.  “These gowns look amazing!  These are really yours?”

“...yes…” she answers, unsure.

Shizuka turns and scrutinizes Hinata in the flickering candlelight.  “Put one of them on!”

Hinata stares at her friend.   _Why?  I don’t...want to…_  She frowns.  “These are all from my past...I don’t really-”

Shizuka shakes her head.  “I’ve heard you sighing all week.”

Hinata frowns harder.  “...Not _all_ week…”

“I know you want to go...I might have heard you and Kurenai talking…”

“Shizuka!” she scolds.  She can’t believe her friend would eavesdrop on her like that.

“Yeah, Kurenai caught me.”  She smiles sheepishly.

Hinata sighs.

“Please, Bucchi, just for tonight!  I want to see the _real_ you.”

She frowns again because isn’t she always her “real” self?  “I...don’t know...everyone is so busy, and I will probably be missed.”

“No one would notice you’re gone.  You’re so unobtrusive anyway.”

Hinata considers Shizuka’s somewhat rude words, knowing them to be true.  Probably no one would notice.

“I’ll take one of your work days!  You can finish that book I know you took from the library…”

“Shizuka!” she hisses, turning wide eyes at Kurenai.  

“You have my permission to go, Hina.  But if you’re going to go, we have to do this quickly.”

Hinata stalls for a moment before giving up.  Truthfully, she hadn’t been looking forward to a night of watching others dance.  She gives them an embarrassed smile.  “Thank you,” she murmurs.  “It’ll be just for a moment, though.  I’ll come back and change after a couple of songs.”

Kurenai and Shizuka smile at her.  

“Let’s get you dressed!” Shizuka exclaims.

They help Hinata into her silver gown, pulling the back tight until she can _almost_ not quite breathe, which she appreciates.  It’s been awhile since her personal maid squeezed the life out of her, and she doesn’t think she can handle that ever again.  Kurenai assists her with pulling her hair up into an easy bun and putting a little makeup on.

She steps into the silver heels and pulls on matching silver gloves.

It’s weird, and yet, at the same time, disturbingly familiar.  As if the gown is a skin she had shed and left behind, only to come back and find it still fits.  As if time had done nothing, as if she hadn’t changed at all, even though she feels completely different on the inside.

She can almost feel Toneri at her door…

“You look completely different,” Shizuka breathes.

Kurenai slowly nods in agreement.  

With her hair pulled out of her face, the candlelight catches on her high cheekbones, her milky skin, her even hairline.  Her eyes brighten in a way none of them had seen before, and they note, _they_ do _have color_ , albeit not quite one they can name.  It becomes apparent to them that the ragged girl really does have noble birth.

“Oh, Bucchi, wow.  You’re beautiful,” Shizuka says again in awe.  “No one is going to recognize you.  I hardly recognize you.”

“Really?” she asks nervously.

Shizuka nods again.

“Let’s hurry.  Hina, go out the back door and make your way around the castle.  Since the dancing has already begun, you won’t have to worry about being announced, and likely no one will see you unaccompanied outside,” Kurenai says, rushing them out of the room.

“Have fun!” Shizuka whispers excitedly.

“Thank you, Shizuka.  Thank you, Kurenai.  I’ll be back to help as soon as I can.”

 

She heads around the castle, only to see that people are in fact still arriving.  She stands there, hiding behind some hedges, waiting to see if the crowd goes down.  But even then, the coachmen could see her.

She tightens her lips.  She can’t go back. Not after all the work Shizuka and Kurenai put into her appearance.  

She stands there indecisively, until she realizes she doesn’t have to go into the ballroom through the front door.

She steps through the manicured gardens toward the ballroom, taking the time to actually enjoy the designs.  Music filters through the open side-doors, and she sways to the music a bit as she walks around.

The last time she enjoyed any gardens was with Hanabi.  

She wonders about her sister.  Whether her sister has attended any balls since she left.  Whether she’s danced with Konohamaru.  She can just imagine her sister acting uninterested, but in the end, relenting easily to his advances.  The thought brings a smile to her face, and she wanders around the gardens, admiring the details, flowers, and scents.

“Good evening, miss.”

Her eyes widen, her heart instantly leaping into her throat at the unexpected, familiar, gravelly voice.  “M-Ma-”  Her eyes widen _even more_ , as she catches herself about to say “Master Naruto.”  She swallows and turns, recomposing herself into the lady her father always expected of her with her practiced, small smile.  “My, it really is a good evening.”

He grins.  “It looks like I surprised you.  Sorry about that.”  His intention in saying a greeting first was to _not_ scare her, but it looks like he fails at manners no matter what he does.

 _He doesn’t recognize me_.  Relief floods her, and she looks at him and realizes...he’s _devastatingly handsome_.  It could be the embellished tunic and cloak, or the candlelight she and the maids had set up earlier, or the music, or it could just be him...but seeing him outside like this in the intimate dark feels completely different.  She blinks quickly to come back to the present. She shakes her head and smiles again.  “Almost anyone can surprise me.  It wasn’t you.”

His brows suddenly furrow.  He stares at her.   _Her eyes_.  He notes they’re exactly like that maid’s, that young woman who, for some reason he cannot fathom, dislikes him.  Who would’ve thought that there was more than one person in this world who has eyes like hers.  It isn’t a birth defect after all.  Perhaps it’s an eye color specific to a certain region?  He rubs the back of his neck nervously.  “Ah, sorry to stare.”  She doesn’t even know that he was staring at her from the terrace.  That he came outside for a breather, but he never got it back once he saw her.  “You have the same eyes as someone I know.”

“O-oh,” she murmurs.  

He clears his throat.  This young woman makes him feel socially awkward in a way that he _never_ feels.  “Was the music not to your tastes?  What are you doing out here?” _Alone?_  

“Oh,” she searches for an excuse.  “I just needed a break.  The party is lovely.”  She smiles a bit to herself, knowing that it’s thanks to her and the servants’ work.

He nods.  “I’m glad.”  He doesn’t recall seeing her inside at all.  Certainly he would have noticed her when she came up to introduce herself at the beginning, right?  Maybe there were just too many women.  His eyes were starting to roll to the back of his head with all the names, formalities, crowded gowns, and he couldn’t handle anymore.  Thus his escape outdoors when his parents got swept into a conversation and stopped monitoring him.

“How is the party going for you, Naruto?”  His title-less name on her lips is strange, but she finds herself savoring it.  

“Oh, it’s wonderful!  Although honestly, balls are not exactly my favorite way to pass the time...  Ah, but the household’s staff put so much work into tonight, I will do my best to enjoy it to the fullest!”

She looks at him in wonder.  He never fails to surprise her.  “Yes, they certainly do work very hard.  I...never thank them enough.”

His eyes widen.  “You understand!  My cousins never understand me, that the staff do so much, it feels wrong to call them my servants...but, you understand me, right?”

A blush rises.  She wouldn’t have understood before, but…she nods.  “I understand now.”  She notices the way his eyes glow, lively, down at her, and she feels the urge to learn more about him.  What makes him so special?  He seems to be cut from a different cloth.  Enlightened about people in a way no one else is.  “What do you usually do to pass the time?”

He grins.  He tells her of hunting, of board games with his cousins, of traveling.

She asks questions, amazed that she can carry on a conversation with him...that he _lets_ her carry the conversation.  She asks him more questions about the places he’s been to, about the people he has met, about his hunting excursions, about his family.  She learns a ton about him, while simultaneously not giving him a chance to ask her any personal questions.

But eventually he laughs off her following question, “That’s enough about me already.  What about you?  What do you like to do?”

It’s a safe question.  One she can answer without giving too much about herself away.  “I enjoy reading.  And walking in the gardens.  I like shopping and looking at the new patterns…I don’t do too many interesting things,” she answers bashfully.

He shakes his head in disagreement of her words.  She seems so modest, unlike the Uzumaki women, all strong characters.  “What do you think of my family’s gardens?”

She smiles, looking around.  “They are certainly the most beautiful I have ever seen,” she breathes.

He blushes.  “I..uh...actually designed some of them a few years ago,” he admits.

Her eyes widen up at him.  “Really?  Which ones?”

“Here.”  He offers his arm to her, heat coming to his cheeks that he hopes she can’t see in the dark.  “Let me show you around.”

She hesitates to take his arm.  But he’s holding his arm up so earnestly, it would be flat-out rude to reject him.  She swallows her nerves, realizing that Toneri never once offered his arm to her.  Naruto is a far cry from the man she left behind.  Almost in an act of rebellion, she fits her hand into the crook of his arm carefully.

They smile at each other for a heart-stopping second.  

He bites his lip and faces forward.  “This way.”  He takes her further into the gardens, the music turning distant.  

“I-is it okay for you to be so far from the celebration?” she asks, uncertain.

“It’s fine,” he shrugs carelessly.

She can’t stop her giggle.  He’s so different from the young lords she knew back home, who were always concerned about making good impressions in front of the wealthy, who were always too scared to even talk to her due to her severe father.

He grins self-consciously at her.  “What?”

“Oh nothing…”

“What is it?”

“It’s really nothing.”

“Fine, don’t tell me.”

“W-what?” she gasps out in a surprised laugh.

They walk through the gardens, and he points out certain flowers and plants to her.  He takes her through the hedges she admired when she first arrived, and they pause before hidden fountains, talking and laughing.  He talks about how his younger cousins like to play hide-and-seek in the bushes, and how he’s had to find them when they got lost.  How he likes to study about different plants from around the world, and then try to import them and cultivate them in these gardens.  But how his favorites are the Uzushio natives.  He brings them to a small pool surrounded by blooming trees, the fragrance heavy in the air.  The music doesn’t penetrate the secluded area, but they don’t notice the quiet as he tells her the related Uzushio folklore for the blossoms.  Her expressions of wonder and curious questions keep him going.  He doesn’t know how much time passes.

“These gardens are so beautiful.  I’ve never seen any of these flowers before,” she comments as they rest on a bench.

“You’re not from around here,” he notes aloud, a little shy.  Her different speech pattern makes her seem that much more interesting to him.  “...Where are you from?” he asks, when she doesn’t answer his comment.

“Ah...I’m...from…” she searches for a lie.  She realizes they’re sitting somewhat closely.  The last time she was in his proximity was when she was his maid…

She is a maid.  

What has she been doing this whole time?  How could she so thoughtlessly keep all of his attention the entire night?  Her eyes turn down, ashamed.  “I’m from...Bath…”

His brows furrow.  “Bath?”  He’s never heard of such a place.  A strange name.

She nods, unable to make eye contact.

He pauses.  “Where are you staying?  So that I might...call on you?” he asks, nervously.  Making his intentions toward her known.

“Ah…”  She blushes.  She bites her lips.  Her insides twist in frantic joy and fear.

 **_BONG_** _,_ **_BONG_** _…_ The town clock tower chimes loudly, seemingly endlessly.  

She looks up finally, counting the hours.  “Oh my…”  She stands, shocked.  She promised to return to work after a couple of songs.  Instead she disappeared for several hours.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, upset that his question went unanswered.

“I’m sorry, I...I need to go,” she murmurs.  “I’ve been gone for too long.”

“Allow me to escort you...”  He stands, but she’s already walking away.  “Wait, Miss-”  His eyes widen.  He never got her name.  “Wait!”

Instead, her pace picks up.

He watches her run away from him, turning around a hedge, disappearing from sight.  “What?”  After a second of confusion, he gives chase.  She can’t just run away from him like that!  He doesn’t even know what he did.  He never got her name!  “Wait, stop!”

She runs faster.  The heels!  She can’t have him see where she goes!  She needs to get away quickly.  She steps out of her shoes, picks up her laced skirt, and makes her escape around the manicured trees.

He tears his way around the hedges and finds her dancing slippers fallen over on the ground.  His eyes widen at seeing them.  She wanted to get away from him.  Fast.  He picks them up, a pang of hurt striking his chest, and continues running.  Once he gets out of the gardens, he dashes into the ballroom, searching the sea of guests for her dark hair, her silver dress, her white skin.  He doesn’t see her anywhere.  He turns to rush to the front, to the carriages.  The carriages remain unmoving.  She’s not there.  She disappeared.  As if the past three hours had been some kind of fever dream.  But the shoes in his hand tell him otherwise.

He runs his hand through his hair, messing up the carefully combed locks.  “What?!” he vocalizes in frustration.  He’s not slow.  There’s no way she left in such a short amount of time.

“Naruto!  Where have you been this whole time?!”  His mother marches up to him, a scowl on her face.

“Where did she go?!”  He turns to his mother, equally upset.

“Where did who go?”

“The girl!  The...the girl!”  He lifts up her shoes.  “She was just here!  I was talking to her!  The whole night!  She just...she just disappeared!”

His mother stares at the glittering silver heels.  An expensive pair.  “You were talking to a girl?  She disappeared?  Why do you have her slippers?”

The expression on his face is so utterly dumbfounded, she realizes he doesn’t know how to answer any of her questions.

“I don’t know.  We were having such a good time.  And then she just...she just ran away from me!”

“Were you being a gentleman?” she accuses.

“Yes!  I didn’t do anything to her!  Nothing!  I just let her hold my arm while we walked around.  I didn’t...I didn’t do anything!”

His voice sounds too emotional to be a lie.  “...What was her name?  Maybe we can contact her tomorrow.”

He hangs his head.  “I...I didn’t think to get her name.”

Her jaw drops.  Her son can be so thoughtless.  For once, his lack of manners truly backfired on him.  “You didn’t learn anything else about her?”

His hand clenches at the shoes.  What was he doing the whole night?  He had her with him the whole night, and somehow, he didn’t learn a single thing about her.  She was so attentive, so willing to listen to him talk and talk and talk and talk and...it was a stroke to his ego, having such a beautiful lady at his side...oh… “She said she was from Bath.”

“Bath?” his mother repeats.

He nods slowly.  In all of his geography studies, he had never heard of such a place.  “She was foreign.  She had a different accent and speech pattern.  Her eyes were interesting, too…” _Her eyes.  Maybe...maybe that maid would know…_  “They were like Bucchi’s!”

She stares at him with a frown.  “The maid?  The maid who doesn’t like you?”

He grimaces.  It’s no secret that the timid maid avoids him like he’s the plague embodied.  “Yeah…But she was nothing like Bucchi!  She was so kind and…” He pauses again, realizing he knows next to nothing about the girl he was talking to just a moment ago.  He huffs.  She was kind and beautiful.  As if just looking at her, dancing by herself in his gardens, put a spell over him.  A young lady any man would want to approach.  He finds it hard to find fault with himself.  “If you met her, you would understand.  I...I wasn’t thinking straight,” he admits, trying to keep a furious blush from rising.

His mother sighs.  “Let’s host another ball tomorrow.  If we’re lucky, she will come again.  We’ll announce it now.”

He nods.  Hopefully she will attend tomorrow.  

 

In her usual maid’s outfit and coat, she rushes to the kitchens.  She slips in with the rest of the workers and helps with plating the fruits and ice creams.  

But she doesn’t forget the magical night she just spent with the young lord.  She smiles quietly to herself, remembering his closeness, remembering the sound of his bright voice, remembering his smile.  The way he looked at her so kindly.  Not at her body but at _her_ , as if she had words worth saying, as if he was speaking just to hear her respond.  It’s a memory she decides to enjoy for now, before she can regret it.

 

The following morning, Shizuka finds her before the castle comes alive.  “Someone looks like she had a good night,” she whispers.

Hinata can’t help nodding.  “I had a lot of fun.  Thank you so much, Shizuka.”

“Will you go tonight?”

“...Tonight?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?”

“The young lord fell in love!”  

“...What?”

“Well, that’s what everyone is saying.  Our Lady announced last night that they will host another ball tonight.  It was so out of the blue!”

“...Oh?…”  No wonder everyone went to bed last night grumbling about an early start.

“You didn’t hear the rumors?”  

She shakes her head.  She was too wrapped up in her own happiness to really listen to what others were saying.

“Apparently the young lord came bursting into the ballroom, looking for a young lady.  He was carrying her heels and looking everywhere.”

“O-oh!”  Hinata looks away, embarrassed and worried.  She didn’t mean to cause him any distress.

“I heard he was really distraught!”

“...R-really?” she asks weakly.

“Yeah.  She must have been really beautiful…”

Hinata keeps her eyes to the floor.

“Was it you?”

“What?”

“...It was you, wasn’t it!”

“N-no, I never saw him all night…”

“A girl suddenly disappearing without a trace!  It had to have been you!”  Shizuka’s voice heightens.

“Shhh!”  

“It _was_ you,” Shizuka whispers.  

“We just talked a little.  He didn’t recognize me, but then he started asking me _questions_ , so...I...might have...ran away…”

“You _ran away_ from him?” Shizuka asks in quiet disbelief.

She nods.  It wasn’t the best decision, now that she thinks about it.  She should have just lied.  But she was never good at thinking on her feet.  “Well, he’ll never see her again, so there’s no use talking about that now,” Hinata concludes, talking about herself like it was another person.

“Ohh noo, Bucchi, you’re not getting out of this so easily.  You told me you had ‘a lot of fun.’”

Hinata sighs.  “That was yesterday, Shizuka.  For me...I’d like the past to stay in the past.  This-”  Hinata holds up her plain skirts and gestures at her coat.  “This is my life _now_.  Last night was just a…”  She shrugs.  “I-I just did it because you and Kurenai were insisting.”

Shizuka smirks.  “Well...I’m _insisting_.”

Hinata shakes her head.  “ _No_ , Shizuka, _no._  If I got caught, we don’t know what could happen.  And Naruto-”

“Hmm??  Where’s the honorific, Bucchi?”

She reddens like a ripe tomato.  “Th-that, I-I meant _Master_ Naru-”

“If you don’t go tonight, I’ll tell Kurenai all about this, and I’ll get her to assign you to cleaning the chamber pots for a week, no, a month, no-”

Hinata’s jaw drops.  “You _wouldn’t_.”

“Oh, I would, my dearest.  This is more excitement than I’ve ever seen in my entire time here, and you are not going to leave our darling young lord heartbroken.  Knowing him, I bet he thinks he wronged you for you to take flight like that. You are going to go back there tonight, find him, and sweep him off his feet before he knows what hit him.”

Hinata looks at Shizuka with an increasingly gaping expression.  “Sh-shizuka, it’s not like that!  It wasn’t like that!  Yesterday-, last night-, we were just talking!”

“You.   _You_ were ‘ _just talking_ ’ with Master Naruto?”  

Hinata frowns at that.  Caught.  Everyone knows that she avoids him like he’s a pestilence, to the point that Kurenai had stopped assigning her jobs that took her near him.  But none of them would understand how she felt!  She spoke to him the first time while he was in his _bathrobes_.  It was too much for her to handle.  She couldn’t even look at him without feeling like she had overstepped some unspoken boundaries.  She could get over losing her name and her titles, but she couldn’t just forget her modest upbringing.  The only thing that kept her from turning away from him last night was the fact that she wasn’t supposed to be “Bucchi,” but some young lady that had never met him before.  “L-let’s stop talking about this now.  We need to report for duty.”

“You’re still going tonight.”

She doesn’t reply to that, but in her heart, she knows that Shizuka is right.

 

Though she mentally prepared herself to see him again that night, she was not at all prepared to see him that afternoon.  

Shion comes up to her, voice hostile.  “Master Naruto wishes to speak to you.”

Her eyes widen.

Shion turns around abruptly, not looking back to see if she’s following.  “Hurry, we don’t want to keep the young lord waiting.”

Her heart races, palpitating like it’s on its last legs.  There’s no way that he knows.  There’s just no way that he figured out it was her.  He never gave an inkling of recognition besides his comment on her eyes.  “Sh-shion,” she tries.  “Do you...do you know what he wants?”

The blonde maid sighs.  “He’s been pining away in the library all day.  Looking for a place called ‘Bath.’  That young lady he met yesterday claimed to be from there.  Kimiko and I have been helping him search for maps and any geographical records since this morning.”

Hinata ducks her head in terrible guilt.  

“I know you don’t like the young lord, but you need to help him out if you know anything about this.  He only finally gave up looking five minutes ago, and there’s less than an hour until guests start arriving.”  Shion pushes open the door to his bedchamber.

He’s sitting at his dresser, staring at her silver shoes.    

She’s never felt guilt like this before.  Not even when she fled from home.  At least back then she had a good reason.  

But for yesterday’s frivolous behavior?  

It was entirely selfish.

He turns his head so fast, it looks like he almost got whiplash.

She ducks her head to the floor, afraid.

“Bucchi,” he calls out.

The girl raises her head a bit, her pale eyes peeking through her hair before flashing away once more.

They really are the same.  Hope fills him.  If in the case the young lady doesn’t come back tonight, maybe this maid can help him.  He gets straight to the point.  “Do you know of a place called Bath?”

She tries to keep from squirming.  The lie has come back to bite her.  She shakes her head at the floor.  “I-I apologize, Master Naruto.  I have never heard of such a place,” she says as quietly as she can while still being heard.  What if he recognizes her voice?

He dramatically sinks in on himself, slouching on his stool, looking absolutely exhausted.  He sighs loudly, defeated.  “Am I going crazy?” he wonders aloud.

“Young Master, the dancing slippers are right there.  We all believe you,” Kimiko states, ever composed.

“Yeah, but, did I...did I hear her wrong?  Maybe she was trying to say something else or…”  He shakes his head.  “It feels like a dream,” he mutters.  “Yesterday feels like an elaborate dream.”

Hinata bites her lips, hearing his doubts.  She never imagined she would have this effect on him.  He liked her more than she could have ever imagined.  “Maybe-” her voice raises.

Their attention darts to her.

She stares at the floor, gathering confidence.  “Maybe she was...trying to hint at something else, sir…a special place...or someplace that held meaning to her...”

He leans forward, concentration revived.  “You’re suggesting she meant it like a riddle?”

She shrugs, still determinedly staring at the floor.  It wasn’t meant to be a “riddle” for him to figure out.  She had said it in a moment of shame, of disappointment.  “I-I wouldn’t know, sir.”

“Master Naruto, I truly hate to interrupt your search, but we must prepare you for the ball,” Kimiko says.  “If the young lady returns tonight, don’t you want to look your best for her?”

He straightens immediately.  “How much time do we have?”

“Very little time, I’m afraid, Master Naruto.  May I request for Bucchi’s help with your dressing?”  

He nods his permission.  “I hope she comes tonight.”

“Yes, for your sake, we all hope she does, too, Young Master.”  Kimiko turns to Shion and Bucchi.  “Shion, prepare his tunic.  Bucchi, stand ready with his comb.”

Naruto chuckles.  “Thank you to all of you for trying to help me with her.  I...I don’t know what it is.  It’s just that...after yesterday...it all feels so incomplete.”

“Incomplete, sir?” Shion asks as she readies his tunic.

“Yeah, like, I told her everything about my life, and I found out so little about her.  Not even her name!  It feels so _wrong_.  I can’t forgive myself.  I can’t just...I can’t just let it go, you know?  A real gentleman doesn’t just talk forever about himself.”

“I’m sure you were a fine gentleman, Master Naruto,” Shion reassures.  “You always are.”

He laughs.  “Thanks, Shion, even though I know you’re just saying that.”  He stands as Kimiko unbuttons his casual shirt.

Hinata makes sure to keep her eyes trained firmly on the floor.  She would die if she saw him without clothes...he would probably die, too, if he knew the young lady of his worries was right there beside him as he undressed.

He sighs.  “Can you believe she ran away from me?”

“We will say it as many times as you need us to, Master Naruto, but we’re certain that there must have been a pressing reason for her to do that,” Kimiko states.

He chuckles darkly once more.  “She took off her shoes.  She ran from me barefoot.”

The proof is right there before all of them.  Kimiko and Shion glance at the sparkling silver pair.

“P-perhaps...” she starts quietly.

“Yes, Bucchi?” he invites.

“Perhaps, M-Master Naruto, it’s related to...when you asked her...where she’s from?” she softly says.  She’s not sure any of them heard her.  She was talking to the floor.

Naruto hums in thought.  “...She doesn’t want me to know where she’s from.  Or where she’s staying…”  He sighs.  “Why not?” he asks aloud, and his voice comes out somewhat pained.

“Bucchi, he’s ready,” Kimiko directs.

She hesitantly steps up to his seated form, now clothed as Kimiko and Shion carefully pin his decorations and cape into place without poking him.  She draws the comb through his mussed, golden locks, the short strands straightening with each pass.  She holds her breath through the entire ordeal.  She’s never done anything so intimate with a man before. Thankfully, Naruto has his eyes closed, obviously deep in thought.

His eyes suddenly pop open.

It scares her so badly, she nearly drops the comb.  “Ah,” she breathes out in shock.

His eyes turn upward.  “Sorry, Bucchi, did I scare you?”  A strange sense of deja-vu passes over him.

“N-no, I apologize, Master Naruto.”

He breathes out deeply, his fingers drumming on his knees.  “I’m so nervous,” he laughs.  “I really hope she comes tonight.  That way I know yesterday wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.”

She stays silent for the rest of the time, only bowing when she’s dismissed.  Her mind is crowded with opposing feelings.  Guilt, anticipation; shame, excitement.  She doesn’t know what to do with herself.  Her mind is telling her that she shouldn’t carry on like this.  She’s just a maid now.  A maid in a foreign country without any family background or land to recommend her.  Just that morning she had been mopping their ballroom floor.

Her heart beats a different tune.  

 

But fortunately or unfortunately for her, it’s not up to her to decide.

Shizuka pushes her to her room, pulls out the gold dress, and commands her to put it on.  “Just because I know you’re secretly above me in social class doesn’t mean I can’t get you to clean chamber pots for the rest of the year.”

It’s a pretty effective threat.  

And before she knows it, she’s dressed in the gown that she last saw Toneri in, her hair pulled up and away from her face, and Kurenai’s light makeup dusted on her eyes, cheeks, and lips.

Shizuka shakes her head in disbelief, blinking rapidly.  “Really, Bucchi, I just can’t believe my eyes.  You look like an entirely different person without that coat on.  You have such a nice figure and such nice skin.  Any man would want to marry you.  I really have no idea what could have chased you away from home...”

Hinata grimaces.  “Shizuka…”

She gapes at Hinata.  “I’m sorry!  I spoke out of line.”

Hinata shakes her head.  “...I’ll tell you one day...this gown is actually a part of that story…”  She sighs.  “With Master Naruto, it’s not what you think...I’ll tell him tonight that I can’t be with him, so…”

Shizuka nods in understanding.  “At least try to enjoy yourself a little?  Who knows if you’ll ever have a chance to wear gowns like this ever again.”

 _I never will_.  “Thank you, Shizuka,” she whispers.  

The two part ways.   

Hinata sneaks around the back again.  

Dancing music fills the air in the gardens.  

She sticks to the shadows, quietly ascending the steps of the terrace to the side doors.  The closer she gets, the faster the blood seems to pump through her veins.

She enters the ballroom, slipping into the crowd.

Older gentlemen and ladies stand around, talking and making connections.  Younger couples swirl in the center of the ballroom to the music.

She tries not to feel self-conscious.  

It’s difficult when she sees eyes turning toward her, the crowd noticing her gleaming, silky, rose-adorned gown.  

She stands taller, resisting the urge to shrink into herself.  She scans the twirling couples, wondering if the young master is already on the floor with someone.

“You came.”  The familiar, masculine voice sounds breathless.

Her head jerks to her left, to see him, standing a few paces from her.  She doesn’t know what expression to give.  So she blushes.

He draws closer to her.  Slowly.  Worried that she’ll dart away if he gets too close.  “You’re here,” he reiterates, his eyes wide, trying to take in everything about her without looking like he’s ogling her.  

In the light of the many chandeliers, she’s more beautiful than he remembered.  The dark strands of her loose bun teasing at her graceful neck, leading down to fair shoulders, and even fairer...he draws his eyes up to meet her light eyes.  The gold gown only serves to make her white skin glow with a warmth she didn’t have yesterday.  Yesterday, in the garden, an ethereal, untouchable, silver dream.  Now, gold--rich, vibrant gold; a winner’s gold.  The color taunts him.  It’s an awful, wrong, disgusting feeling, to want to run his hands over her, to grasp her tightly, a _trophy_ for his own.  

She turns to face him fully, steadying her nerves.  “Good evening,” she greets much more calmly than she feels on the inside.  She’s almost glad that she got to see him ahead of time, already dressed with accents of blue, setting off his even bluer eyes.  Her heart only slightly more prepared for the weak-kneed feeling his unwavering gaze gives her.

He comes up a little too close.  But he’s breathing too quickly to care, a madness threatening to consume him that he needs to swallow back, and he wonders if this feeling, this sickness, is a part of her secret, her mystery.  It’s a warning she tried to teach him yesterday, but here she is, in his household, again.   _All in gold_.  He has no control over his actions because before he realizes it, he’s taken her golden, gloved hand, placed it at his lips, and he’s asking a question that would keep her at his side, keep her in his arms for the rest of the night.  “May I have this dance?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wow I'm having so much fun writing this story >< As much fun as Nightdreams, except this is way fluffier because fairy tales.  
> This is bad news for my grad school.
> 
> Note: Shizuka is not an OC. She's a very minor character that's not from Konoha that I re-appropriated and put into Uzushio for this story.
> 
> Happy Easter, everyone!
> 
> And thank you for reading and for the support you guys have been showing me x) You know I really appreciate it.  
> Finally, Happy NaruHina Week 2019!
> 
> Next chapter will be up as soon as I have time to write it.


	4. Lies/Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hinata takes hard-to-get to a whole new level, and the romance in this chapter is practically too much to handle.
> 
> Just warning everyone.
> 
> Please enjoy the NaruHina!

Blushes are no strangers to Hinata’s cheeks.  She’s blushed on several occasions--an incredibly shameful feeling she has associated with her father’s reprimands after less-than-perfect behavior on a day or night out in society.  

But this?

This heat that rushes not just to her face but through her whole being is completely new.  

Never has anyone ever been so _respectfully_ forward with her.  To kiss her fingers.  An entirely _romantic_ gesture that no young man has ever attempted in front of her family, her father.  

Others have bowed or taken her hand to ask for a dance.  Others have been like Toneri, expressing their interest with their eyes in extremely uncomfortable ways.  But not like this. _Never like this._    

She can’t say a word with her heart in her throat and she nods.  How could she ever say no?  He made it a perfect impossibility.

He straightens, a smile lighting his face.

 _Oh._  She gazes up at him as he guides her to the floor. _He’s really beautiful._

He places his hand around her waist, at the small of her back, gently.  He leads them in the simple steps, the music pulling their motion across the floor in time with other couples.  

She’s looking up at him, her eyes never leaving his.  It’s the sweetest feeling, being held by him, dancing with him.

The music slows to an end, but he doesn’t move to let go of her, and she follows his lead, unquestioning.  She lets him guide her into the next dance, and the next one. Each one feels more comfortable, bringing them closer in intimate knowledge of the other’s rhythm and movement.   

The musicians seem to take notice, the music becoming more elaborate to suit the young lord and his chosen dance partner.  Fewer couples command the floor as others take to the side to watch him lead the young lady.

Gazing at his gentle smile and his lively eyes, she finds herself untiring, only too content to put her trust in his motion.  She thinks she could dance with him all night, and it still wouldn’t seem like enough.  She can’t remember the last time she enjoyed dancing so much, or a time her dance partner seemed relaxed enough to lead her so confidently.  She doesn’t know how long they’re dancing.

Eventually, the music calms to a slower tempo, inviting more couples back to the floor.

The two sway to the music, cheeks slightly flushed.

With the undemanding music, Naruto notes the shine of her hair, the thickness of her lashes,  the roundness of her eyes, and how they seem only larger with her light pupils, perhaps a pale lavender or other unnameable color.  The fullness of her bottom lip.  Her smooth skin.  The dip of her collar and just below… He draws his eyes back up quickly.  Desire and attraction unfurl so badly that he knows it, and it hurts.  

Conscious thought returns to him.  

She left him, but now she’s back, dancing with him in his arms, as if she hadn’t fled from him barefoot.   _Why did she leave me like that?_   _Did I do something?... WHAT’S HER NAME?_  That seems like a good a place as anywhere to start, the perfect question to ask as they dance, until overwhelming shame engulfs him.  His behavior yesterday was terribly thoughtless.  It would be no wonder if she thinks him a fool.  “Miss…”

Her long, dark lashes lift ever so slightly at his address.  

“I must ask for your pardon.”

Confusion seems to knit her brow.

“I was such a fool yesterday.”  They sway with the music as he leads her across the floor.  “And I was filled with regret all day, not knowing if I would see you again.”

Hinata swallows and shakes her head slightly in disagreement, knowing this to be her own fault, knowing that in fact, he had seen her, and he just didn’t know it.  “I’m here, aren’t I?” she questions quietly.

He smiles a bit, his hands unconsciously holding her tighter.  “Forgive me...I never asked for your name.  Tell me…” He gazes at her soft, pastel eyes.  “...please, so that I might put a name to someone so beautiful.”

She should have been expecting this.  She should have known that he would ask.  But somehow it hadn’t been a concern.  They had talked so naturally the night before, the fact that he didn’t ask for her name never alarmed her.

He searches her expression, wondering at her silence.  Her lips part, and he focuses desperately on her quiet voice that could so easily get lost in the music and murmurings of surrounding guests.

“I must ask for your pardon, as well.  Yesterday, when I left you so quickly…”  Her eyes are cast low, and he can’t read her thoughts behind the words.  “It seems I caused you great inconvenience.  I am not such a lady to deserve your attention and kindness.”

 _But, your name?!_ He couldn’t care less about her running away from him.   _What is her NAME?!_   He shakes his head, and he’s not sure if it’s adrenaline or the crescendo in the music, or both, but he grasps her tighter, suddenly afraid that she’ll slip away from him again.  “Miss, I…”  He gazes at her, beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful_.  “I would gladly spend every moment in inconvenience if you would allow me to be acquainted with you.”

She turns her face up to him again in shock.  He couldn’t mean that, could he?

“Please...I must know your name.  I will never forget someone as beautiful as you for as long as I live.”  

She blushes.  How could he say something like that and mean it entirely?  She averts her gaze, only to finally become aware of the many guests watching them.  She blushes harder, and finds that she doesn’t know where to look.  “...I am certainly not worth such exaggerated praise, Naruto.  It must be the gown…”  For all she knows, maybe it is.  The last time she wore it, she heard incredible things, albeit it in a much different vein, from _another_ man.

“...You’re unfair,” he quietly accuses.  “You know my name, but you won’t tell me yours?”  How can she deny him when he’s asked...countless times.

Unexpectedly, she smiles, her eyes sliding to the side with a secret.  She looks up at him, but her expression appears almost pained.  “You _do_ know my name.”

His eyes widen.  “I…” He doesn’t know what to say.  He’s never met her before last night.  “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it…please forgive me.”

Instead of defeat or understanding, she just looks up at him kindly.  “You haven’t forgotten...you have called me before…”

He searches his memory.  “...What do you mean?  Have we met before?”

She slowly nods.  

There’s just no way they’ve met before.  She’s not from Uzushio.  Even if she wasn’t in her ball gowns, he’s certain he would remember someone as elegant and beautiful as her.  He rarely forgets a name.  He buys himself time to remember by spinning her, lifting her, dancing with her, but she’s just so beautiful, he can’t concentrate.  He’s never been so attracted to anyone before.  “I must apologize again,” he says, ashamed.  “Where have we met?  When have we met?”

She pauses, unsure of how to respond.  She looks plainly at him, wondering if she really looks so different in her gowns.  “We’ve met…” she starts, looking earnestly at him.  “...at…”  Just that day she had been only a few centimeters from him, well, behind him, but still…  “At...Comb…”  She looks away, suddenly aware of herself.  She shouldn’t lead him on.  She doesn’t want him to find out who she is, right?

He stares at her.   _Comb?_  He shuts his eyes for a second, trying to keep himself from doing something he would regret.  Like crying out.  Or shaking her and forcing her to speak plainly.  “Miss...I’m afraid you haven’t noticed.  I’m not...I’m not clever, neither am I experienced with women...Please.”  He doesn’t know how many times he’s asked.  At this point, he must sound downright pitiful.

She feels another pang of guilt.  “...Must I tell you my name for us to be acquainted?”

He considers her words for a moment, but he can’t understand why she won’t tell him her name.

“Can we not...enjoy tonight...as we did last night?” she asks carefully, hopefully, that these moments with him can last for as long as possible.  She can’t tell him her name.  Her real name.  She doesn’t know what kind of connections he has. The Namikazes are involved in trading, a fact she’d learned the night prior when they met.  He could somehow discover her family.  He could somehow get her shipped back to Konoha.  And she can’t bear to lie about her name.  She doesn’t think she can handle having him call her with another’s name.  

“If you can’t tell me your name, can you at least tell me why?” he asks quietly.  

She looks away in thought, her expression darkening with the memory of what she’s left behind.  “My name...only signifies my family’s selfish pride.  It’s just a tradition to set us apart, to build us up, and keep others down…”

He blinks at her.  To say that he’s proud of being both Namikaze and Uzumaki is an understatement.  On one side, a lineage that traces strong through history.  On the other, entrepreneurial spirit and adventure through trade.  Old and new money.  Appreciation for the past and for the future.  A perfect match, an anchor for Uzushio’s continued prosperity.  He’s never thought about it in terms of selfishness.  Social rank always seemed to him like a matter of fact, of life, less so something his family maintained and upholded for their own gain.  

The musicians eventually quiet as the song ends.  He steps back and bows.

She curtsies.

He immediately offers his arm to her, and to his relief, she takes it.  He guides her to the side of the dancefloor, the crowd parting to let them through.  He realizes their eyes are all on the girl beside him, and he draws his arm in, pulling her a little closer.  “Shall...we go somewhere we can talk?” he asks lowly.

She shouldn’t be going anywhere with him.  She shouldn’t be touching him.  She shouldn’t have danced with him so long.  She shouldn’t be wanting him.

She nods in agreement.

They go out to the terrace, but even there guests turn to watch them.  

He takes her down to the gardens, where other couples walk, admiring the flowers.  He guides them back to the private gardens and finds them a bench to rest on.

She sits beside him, admiring the flowers around them.  

“What shall I call you?” he asks, drawing her attention back to him.

She looks up in thought and shrugs, smiling.  “Maybe I don’t want a name.”

He stares at her, bemused.  He’s never met anyone like her before.  He wonders vaguely if he’s fallen into a trap, one too late to climb out of, and one he’s not sure he wants to escape from, anyway.  Everything she has said has been surprising to say the least, and has made him think twice as hard as he usually needs to.  A beauty and a mystery, carrying secrets on her lips.  “Who are you?”  The rude question pops out before he can stop it.  The heart of the matter that he’s been running around ever since he laid eyes on her.

Her eyes widen.  What can she say to that?  That she’s a maid for his family?  She can’t even imagine his reaction.  “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I don’t know anything about you,” he says in quiet argument.  

“Well...you do know about me…”  She smiles.  “I like gardens and reading.”  

“...What else?”

She hums in thought.  What more can she tell him?  

“What books do you read?”

“Oh...I read almost anything.  I like novels and history…What about you?  Do you like to read?”

“Well, I read when I must…”  He considers for a second whether to say it or not, but he decides to go ahead with it.  If he wants to get to know her better, perhaps he needs to be direct, relentless in his pursuit for someone as private as her.  “Like today, I spent all day on it, you know.  Where Bath is.”  He pauses to catch her reaction.

She shies her gaze away uncomfortably, apologetically.

“I looked in every atlas, every geographical record my family owns,” he laments with an exaggerated sigh.  “Only to find out that the sole piece of information I had about you was more a concept than an actual place.”

She grimaces.  “I’m sorry,” she softly says.  “It is an actual place, though.  You just won’t find it on a map.”

He looks at her curiously.  “What about Comb?  Is it here?  Somewhere else?  Did we meet where you’re really from?”

She shakes her head, fighting a smile.  Imagine if she told him she was in the same room as him as he undressed!  “If I told you, you would certainly be upset.”

This only makes his eyes squint more.  Why on earth would he be upset?  Everything she says only gets worse, more confusing.  “There’s no hope for me, is there?  You’re never going to tell me!”

She smiles apologetically at his dramatics.  “It wouldn’t be the best idea to tell you how we met.”

He huffs.  “Fine.  Then tell me about how you came to be in Uzushio.  Are you visiting?  Are you here with your family?”

She bites her lips.  “I can’t tell you that, either,” she whispers.  “But I can tell you that I’m not here with my family.  They are all at home.”

He puzzles over why she can’t tell him so many things.  Is she a criminal?  What is she hiding?  He asks this directly, plainly, “Why do you keep secrets?  Are you going to get me in trouble?  Are you here to steal my money and my heart?”

She shifts from worry to surprised amusement and embarrassment at his easy admission.  He wears his emotions on his sleeve, and it occurs to her again why everyone likes to dote on him.  She shakes her head.  “Oh no!  I didn’t come here with any plans whatsoever.”

“You come to my family’s estate without any motives to catch my eye?  Dressed in silver and gold, looking as naturally beautiful as you are?”

She blushes terribly.  She has never been complimented so heavily in her life.  She shakes her head.  “I had no such intentions.  It had been some time since I enjoyed society in this way.  I wanted to listen to the music.  I hoped to dance a little, and then leave.”

He frowns, finding this somewhat damaging to his pride.  She didn’t come here last night for him at all.  Had he not gone up to her, she would have never even looked his way.  Well, someone as beautiful as her… “You must have other suitors,” he murmurs quietly.  For some reason, it had never occurred to him.  She appeared, like a dream, and existed in his imagination as such, a vision just for him.

“No…”  She shakes her head, but he’s not looking at her.

“Don’t tell me, you’re not already promised to someone?  Or already married?”  He turns to her, eyes wide.  He hates to think he’s some dalliance.  That would explain her secretive nature, her reluctance to have him close.

Her jaw drops.  In a sense...she is.  To Toneri.  She hadn’t thought of it that way, and the idea is nauseating.  No!  No.  She left all of that behind.  “No, there is no one else!” she says as quickly as she can after getting over her initial shock.  But it feels like a lie, even as she says it.  She _was_ promised to someone else.  Against her will.  It was real.  And she is wearing his gown, gifted to her, at this very moment.

He searches her expression.

She gazes at him steadily, albeit worriedly.  She hopes he can’t read her deceit… Her many lies.

He relaxes.  “There’s no one else?” he asks, skeptically.  Are other men blind?

She shakes her head.  “No, there’s no one else.  You’re...you’re the first to...express...romantic intentions...toward me…”  She blushes, and she can’t look him in the eye.  It feels incredibly conceited to say that out loud about him.  But it’s the truth, and she realizes, that’s why she can’t seem to let him go.  Why she keeps piling on lie after lie, keeping him enticed.  It’s shameful.

He looks at her in wonder.  It’s unbelievable.  Where did she come from?  Why would he be the first?  Who is she?  Although they are talking, he still feels like he knows next to nothing about her.  He can’t let the night end like this.  He needs something of hers, a piece of her, a piece of her heart.  How he wishes he could call her name.  “Miss, have you been to Uzushio’s beaches?”

Why would he ask her something like that?  She shakes her head, a question on her face.

“I’ll take you there.  Have you been to our fields of cosmos in the late summer?”

She smiles and shakes her head.

“I can show you that, too.  I think you’ll love it.”

He’s so charming, and he doesn’t even know it.  “I think I would, too,” she murmurs.

“How long will you be here?”

Her smile fades.  Indefinitely.  Until she dies of old age.  And in another perspective, only for tonight.  “Not long…”

“You’re going back home?”

She nods.  In a sense, she is.  The servants’ quarters are her home now.

“You can’t stay?”  But he already knows the answer.  This must be why she won’t have him close.  

“I wish I could.”  She says this as sincerely as she can.  Out of anything she’ll tell him tonight, this may be the only real truth.

He gazes at her longer, unable to accept that she would leave.  He wasn’t exaggerating when he said he would never forget her, someone as beautiful as her.  He takes her hand into his, and she doesn’t pull away.  He takes a deep breath.  “I still want to get to know you.”

She gazes back into his blue eyes that shine even in the moonlit garden.  She doesn’t understand why he’s insisting on this.  And she doesn’t know why she isn’t pulling away from him...or rather...she doesn’t want to think about it.  

“Tell me anything about yourself.”

She thinks about it.  Anything?  She hums in thought.  “...I don’t like formal dinners, but I have always enjoyed balls.  I really enjoyed dancing with you.”

He smiles a little and blushes.  “...I never enjoyed dancing so much as I did tonight…For me, I’d rather be eating and talking than dancing.”

“You were a great dancer, though.”

“Ahh...that’s because my mother forced me to practice a lot a couple of years ago.  I always had two left feet.”

“It didn’t seem that way at all to me.”

“Maybe that’s because I was dancing with you,” he says shyly, watching her own shy reaction.  He feels that fluttering feeling again, same as he did the night before.  He wonders if she feels it, too.  If she feels so happy to just talk to him, too.  “Why don’t you like formal dinners?”

“Oh…My father wouldn’t let me talk because I get...I get nervous…and I stumble on my words a lot in front of others...”

He blinks at her in confusion.  “Really?  Last night, it didn’t seem that way at all to me.”

She thinks about it.  It’s true.  The night before, she hadn’t been nearly as flustered as she usually gets around people.  “Maybe that’s because I was talking with you,” she admits, blushing, repeating his words back to him.

He smiles back, squeezing her gloved hand.  He finally feels like he’s getting somewhere with her.  “Your father wouldn’t let you talk at all?”

She shakes her head.  “He also thought it was best if only the men talk.  He isn’t the only one back home who feels that way.”

He shakes his head.  “That would never happen here.  Perhaps it’s a cultural difference, but all of the Uzumaki women are strong-willed.  Our kingdom’s history is full of important women.”

She smiles, thinking of his mother.  “I would like to study Uzushio’s history sometime.”

“You’re welcome to my family’s library any time,” he says, before remembering that she won’t be staying in the country.  He clears his throat awkwardly.  “Do you have siblings?”

Her entire expression brightens.  “Yes, I have a younger sister.”

He takes in her wide smile.  “What’s she like?”

“She’s funny and cute.  She’s my biggest supporter and she always understands me even though we’re nothing alike.”

He smiles and nods, encouraging her to keep going.

“She’s a little sassy, but she never shows our father that side of her.  She’s good at hiding what she really thinks.  I was never really good at that.  She’s a true Hyu-”  She pauses, catching herself.

“...A true..?” he asks.  

“...Nothing.  Nevermind.”  She shakes her head.  She had never talked so much to a man before, and she got carried away.  Wasn’t she talking too much?  She felt like so many words had never come out of her mouth before all at once.  She averts her gaze, suddenly uncomfortable with how much she said.

 _She_ is _good at hiding what she thinks_ , he disagrees silently.  He can’t imagine what her sister must be like in that case.  “...I always wanted a sibling.  A little brother or a little sister.”

“Your parents didn’t want another child?”

“They did, but my mother had complications when she gave birth to me, so…”  He frowns.  He always felt a little like it was his fault.  “It was lucky that we both lived.”

She nods in understanding.  “That really is.  I’m glad that she was okay...um...After my mother gave birth to my sister, she was really sick.  We don’t know what it was, but she passed away a few years later.”

“My condolences,” he murmurs.

She hums a disagreement, and they fall silent.  

He continues to hold her hand, reviewing everything she told him.  She’s a real person.  Not just a mysterious, beautiful dream.  But learning more about her doesn’t satiate his curiosity the way he thought it would.  He wants to know more.  “When do you leave?  This week?  Next week?”

She bites her lips.  It would be strange to say “tonight,” right?  

“I want to see you again before you go.”

She gazes at their connected hands, unsure of what to say.

“Miss?”  He grows concerned with her silence.  Unconsciously, he holds her hand tighter.

“I leave...I leave next week.”

“Can I see you again?” he asks nervously.

She looks at him sadly.  “I don’t think you can...you see, I’m not supposed to be here.”  Her voice softens at the end.

“You’re not supposed to be here?” he repeats, confused.

She shakes her head.  “I wasn’t supposed to talk to you...or meet you, or be here at all.”

Again.  Suddenly nothing about her makes sense.  “What do you mean?  Why?...You weren’t supposed to talk to _me_?”

She freezes.  She said too much.  “...I...I wasn’t supposed to go out.”  

He processes her words, deciding that she didn’t mean it to be personal.  She simply wasn’t supposed to be out.  His next wondering is, _who?_ She’s not here with family, so who would be keeping her?  But he can’t ask that.  She wouldn’t even tell him where she’s staying.

“...Are you in danger?” he asks quietly, worriedly.

She shakes her head.  “But if I am found out, if everything is discovered, I could be.”

Another possibility comes to mind.  She is a young lady, obviously of wealth.  Could she be a part of a criminal family?  Could she be here in Uzushio to do shady dealings?  He wouldn’t want her to get in trouble, but if his wondering is true, then it would be best if he stayed away from her.  “How dangerous?” he asks.

“Oh, not _dangerous_ , I think.  It would just be...shocking, and...I don’t know how everyone would react.”

He sits back, taking a long look at her.  He can’t figure her out.  He has no idea what her circumstances are.  He should feel exasperated with her.  The smartest thing to do would be to bid her good night and return to the ball, maybe meet someone else.  There are numerous pretty girls here tonight.

But...none of them look like her.  None of them would dance like her.  None of them would make him feel the way he does with her.  Effortlessly comfortable, like she understands everything he says and does, never taking offense to his lack of manners.  Easily drawn-in, like what she says could never be enough.  “We can’t...meet in secret?  Like tonight?”

Her eyes widen.  She wants to say yes.  She wants to say that they could.  But she has nothing to wear other than her now well-worn, plain petticoats, her maid’s uniform, and these ridiculously expensive gowns.  “I...wish I could, Naruto.  I really wish I could.  But I can’t.”

It’s only slightly appeasing to know that she likes him.  Only slightly.  Because she obviously doesn’t like him enough to promise anything.  “Will you ever return to Uzushio?”

“I don’t...I don’t think so,” she murmurs.  She squeezes his hand back.  All of this was a mistake.  She should have never listened to Shizuka and Kurenai.  He should have never seen her, and he shouldn’t be so interested in her.  She shouldn’t be so interested in him.

But then she realizes, she would have never experienced something like this.  She would have lived out her days never knowing anything close to this.  Her only experience with a man would have been Toneri.  She squeezes Naruto’s hand a little tighter.  She looks up at him, and he turns to meet her gaze.  “I’ll never forget you, either, Naruto.  I’ll never forget last night and tonight.  No man has ever made me feel so special, and...I don’t think...I’ll ever have something like this again.  Thank you.”  She smiles.

He listens, wide-eyed, to her confession.  They are young still.  He still has years ahead of him to find someone, even if he hasn’t had romantic liaisons before.  Though he carries a less-than perfect reputation for being reckless...and others have told him that he’s too naive and trusting to properly lead, he always imagined that he’d naturally find someone perfect for him, someone who would accept him the way he is, just like his parents did.  For her to decide that there would never be someone else, well, isn’t that strange, especially with how beautiful she is?  Where did she come from?  Why would no one else be interested in her?... But he won’t complain if he’ll forever hold a place in her mind, a part of her that can be his.  

The clocktower rings in the still of the night, chiming the late hour.

“Is this where you run from me again, leaving your slippers for me to collect?” he jokes unhappily.

She bites her lips, trying to keep a smile from rising.  “I’m sorry.”  She watches him shake his head at the memory.  “But I guess I really should get going...I don’t want to get caught.”

He stares at the ground.  He doesn’t want her to leave.  It feels too soon.  “...One more dance.  Please?”

She knows that she shouldn’t.  But she’s been following her heart all night.  So she nods.

They walk back together to the ballroom, the music growing louder until they’re in the thick of it.  More couples crowd the floor as the evening draws nearer to its close.

He takes one of her hands, slipping his own around her back, enjoying the curve.  They meld into the song of the instruments, finding each other as if they had years of experience together.

He steadies his gaze on hers, a tightening in his chest at finding the small smile on her face.  He could kiss her.  Not here, in front of everyone, and...only after two meetings, certainly that would be extremely inappropriate.  Keeping her to himself for two nights was already incredibly forward of him.  But she didn’t seem to mind it.  She said she would never forget him.  “I’ll never forget you.”

She smiles brightly.  “I’ll never forget you, too.”

They’re holding each other, the music turning them across the floor, when he sees her gaze linger away, her entire expression change.  Her eyes enlarge, her breath catching, her jaw dropping slightly, then her entire posture shrinking.  He turns his head to see what caused such an expression, only to feel her pull away from him.  He looks back, just in time to run and catch her hand as she dashes off the floor.

She turns, and he didn’t know anyone could look so frightened.  His grip falters, a mistake.

She pulls away, her head shaking in a silent “no,” even as he tries to hold onto her.  

He stands there, two steps off the dance floor, bewildered.  Glove in hand.  Her form disappearing through the crowd, out the side doors, out of sight.

 

When she’s reached the safety of her room, she realizes she’s shaking.  Shaking like the first night she arrived in Uzushio and found sanctuary with Kurenai, only this time, there’s no relief.  She strips off her gown, pulls on her plain maid’s skirts and coat, and unpins her hair as quickly as she can.  She scrubs her face until all traces of makeup are down the drain.  She slips into the kitchen, hoping to blend in with the hustle and bustle, her heart just as frantic as the movements of the servants.

He saw her.  He definitely saw her.  There was no mistaking the concentrated recognition on the heir of the Nara clan’s face.  

They were never close.  Never spoke to each other.  She recalls one dance with him.  A perfectly respectful dance between clan heirs for courtesy’s sake, nothing more, nothing less.  She always carried a good opinion of him, if only for that fact.  Others said he is too smart for his own good.  She simply thought that he would grow into it.

As she helps wash dishes, she can only hope that tonight is not the last night for her.  Now that she reflects on it, he has likely been here all night.  He probably saw her even earlier.  She and Naruto had danced for at least an hour together, and for awhile, they were the center of attention.  If he wanted to catch her or confront her, he would have done so, right?

She can guess at why he’s here, likely for some sort of trade agreement, with generations of Naras known to be trusted advisors to the Royal Family.  Maybe he just didn’t want to cause a commotion in the middle of a ball.  Maybe he would try to find her later.  Or maybe he would leave her alone?

She feels shivers go through her again, remembering his stare from across the floor.  A look not of shock or confusion at seeing her alive and well.  No, it was a look of calculation, of an intelligence at work.

She can’t at all imagine what he must have been thinking.  

It was a mistake.

She should have never gone to the ball the night before.

 

He glares out into the dark gardens from the terrace, fisting her glove.  He’s never going to see her again.  And she left him with a face of utter fear.  He realizes that it wasn’t directed at him, that it was at something else, or _someone_ else, but he hates it.

He hates that the night ended, and he found out next to nothing about her.  Not her name.  Not her country.  Not her current address.  Not her family’s occupation.  He had only a few hours with her of complete, blissful...confusion.

And it ended that way, too.

He can’t understand, either, why he’s so attracted to her.

Just looking at her made him feel like he was seeing the meaning of beauty for the first time.

But getting her to talk about herself was like pulling teeth.  

It only made everything she shared about herself that much more precious.  

And dancing with her…

“Naruto, you were here.  Where did your companion go?”

He turns at his father’s voice.  “She…”  He looks at her glove.  “...she left.”  

His father steps closer, looking at the glove, too.  “Kushina and I wanted to meet her.  Well, everyone wanted to know who she was.  The two of you looked so happy together.”

He lets out a long breath.  “Yeah. I wanted to know her, too.”

Minato considers his son’s words and frowns, not finding any sense in them.

“She’s leaving next week,” he murmurs.  “I’m never going to see her again.”

“We could contact her family.  We could try to arrange the two of you,” his father offers.

Naruto shakes his head.  “She wouldn’t tell me her name.”   _I asked a million times._

His father squints in confusion.  She refused to give him her name?  The young lady that had spent all of last night and tonight with his son?  “Why not?”

He shrugs, frowning.  “She couldn’t.”

His answer is bewildering.  “...Why?”

The young man just sighs.  “I don’t know.  It seemed like she liked me…”  He squeezes the glove again, remembering how she said that she would never forget him.

“It certainly looked that way to everyone.”

Naruto turns to him with such earnest curiosity, he realizes that his son _really_ liked her.

But if everything he says is true, that she would be returning home, that she never gave him her name, then she obviously isn’t the best for him.  “Naruto,” he starts gently.  “None of the other ladies here have interested you?”

He frowns and turns away, his eyes distant at the memory of the nameless girl.  “Father, did you _see_ her?”  He sighs, for the third time.  “I don’t think I’m ever going to meet anyone like her ever again.”

It’s a dramatic statement.  And unfortunately, it sounded sincere.  Minato nods in acknowledgement of Naruto’s feelings.  He pats him on the shoulder consolingly.  “You might see her again.  You never know.  If it’s meant to be, then it will be.”

Naruto nods.  “You’re right,” he murmurs, but it doesn’t make him feel much better.  He _wants_ her to be meant to be.

“...Do you think you’re up to meeting a guest?  He’s an emissary from Hinokuni.  He’s about your age.”

Naruto takes a second to compose himself before standing up to follow his father back into the ballroom.  

 

The next morning, Shizuka rushes up close to the melancholic maid’s side.  “How was it last night?” she whispers.

“...I told him I couldn’t see him again,” she murmurs back.

Shizuka looks at her sympathetically.  “Everyone’s talking about you, the mysterious lady, you know.  I heard that you both were dancing for over an hour together.”

Hinata just nods in silent affirmation.

Shizuka wants to ask.  She wants to know if Bucchi loves him, but she bites her tongue.  It’s a tricky situation, and not one to push thoughtlessly.  “Are you...at least glad that you went last night?” she asks carefully.

She worries her lip.  “I might be in trouble, Shizuka.  I saw someone...last night...and he saw me, too.  Someone from my past.”

“Did you get back here without anyone seeing you?”

She nods.  “I think so.”

“There’s no way anyone can recognize you like this.”

Hinata shakes her head.  She thought about this all night.  “That man would just have to see my eyes, Shizuka...and he would know...”

“Your eyes?” she asks.  She knew that Bucchi’s eyes were different, but there are all sorts of people in the world.  After all, Kurenai and Lady Karin have red eyes.  She herself has dark green eyes.

Hinata only nods again, unwilling to share that her eyes are specific to her family.  

“Try not to worry about it too much.  We rarely leave the estate, and we can ask Kurenai to not send you out on errands.”  

 

So she spends the following days completing tasks indoors and out of sight, much of it concerning cleaning after the ball.  When guests who stayed overnight take their leave, the festivities truly feel like they came to an end.  She washes, sweeps, mops, dusts, waiting.  She waits to be called up to the Namikazes to be questioned about her origins.  But nothing happens.  Days go by uneventfully, and she thinks that maybe, just maybe, Shikamaru is leaving her alone.

A week after, when the young “Miss” supposedly went home, she doesn’t mean to, she didn’t want to, but she cries in the dark of her room.  It’s the first time she’s cried in years.

And what’s worse is, she doesn’t really understand why she’s crying.  She appreciates her life.  It could be so much worse.  She could be married to Toneri.  She could have gotten caught, imprisoned, and shipped back to Konoha in shame.  She could have been forced into prostitution upon arriving in a foreign land with no connections and no support.  Just, all of a sudden, all of the stress, the worrying, the disappointment, it all comes down on her at once.

She lets it out in quiet sobs.  

Seeing Shikamaru, as frightening as it had been, struck her with homesickness.  She misses her sister.  She misses the familiarity of her country.  She doesn’t like being _different_ here, with people seeing her eyes and either thinking that she’s blind or creepy.

And Naruto.  She never meant for anything like that to happen, but it all happened so fast, like a mad dream.  It was sudden and intense.  The intimate gardens, his attentive listening, the dancing. The freedom for her to just _be_ with him, and not under the scrutinizing gaze of her father.  Would it have been better for her to have never known such happiness?...

She avoids him at all costs, and he doesn’t summon “Bucchi” again.  

But she thinks about him all the time, wondering if he ever thinks about her.

 

She finds out a couple of weeks later.  

 

Heavy, ominous clouds roll in, covering the sun.  

She and three of the other younger maids hurry outside, unclipping the linens and towels from the lines as quickly as they can.  

A maid gasps, “You can see the rain coming!”

They look, and indeed, it’s a sight.  The rain obscures buildings at a distance, drawing steadily closer and closer, enveloping hills and roads in a translucent sheet of grey.

Hurriedly, they bundle the material in their arms and run for covering.

But once safe, they stand together and watch the rain sweep over the Namikaze property.

Soon enough, the pebbling sound turns into a relentless drumming against the walkways and the roof.  The rain splashes in quickly ponding puddles. Thunder booms in the darkened sky.

A sudden summer storm.

The maids watch in enthrallment as they slowly fold everything neatly.  

“That storm came so unexpectedly,” Hinata comments quietly.

Another maid nods.  “Uzushio’s summer weather can be incredibly temperamental.”

“I hope our lord’s family is somewhere safe,” another says.  

Hinata quiets as she listens to the three wonder about the family’s whereabouts.  It seems that the family went out into town together.

“Do you think that they will return home?”  

“Not in this weather!  They should have found a place in town to stay!”

“They left this morning.  Don’t you think that they would have come back by now?”

They fuss over possibilities when Hinata hears a shout.  She turns to squint into the pouring rain. “Is that...them?”

The other three turn to look.  “Oh my goodness!” one cries. “Let’s go help them!”  

The carriage stops at the front near the entranceway, the coachman jumping off to pull open the door.

The maids sprint out into the rain they had just escaped from, clutching the linens and towels tightly to their chests.  Hinata only hesitates for a second before following after them.

It’s a bit of a run to the front.

They run only harder for it as they see Lord Minato tentatively step out, his blond locks immediately plastered with rain.

She’s struck again by the loyalty of the staff, how self-sacrificing they are for the benefit of their employers.  It’s only a matter of fact that the Namikazes had also saved her from a certain terrible future by allowing Kurenai to hire her on.  

She forgets about the cold rain and mud splashing onto her uniform and coat, drenched in rain, weighing her down.  The other three are just as soaked as she in their own shawls and sweaters.  She huddles with the other maids by the carriage, eager to assist.

One immediately spreads a sheet over Lord Minato to shield him from the rain and goes with him to the entrance.  

The two before her hover over Lady Kushina as she steps out, immediately covering her with a sheet.  “Oh Lady Kushina, let’s get you inside.”  “We’ll call someone to bring you dry clothes.”

Hinata realizes too late that she’s left with their son.  She spreads a sheet over him, but he grabs it and throws it over her, too.  

“You all got soaked!” he says, his tone slightly scolding.  

She blinks rapidly at the unexpected gesture, her heart already accelerating so fast, she thinks she could die.

Instead, she rushes with him to the covering of the entrance.  

She pulls the sheet off of him and starts wiping him down with a towel, the way she saw the three others doing for Lord Minato and Lady Kushina.  

He immediately starts rejecting her fussing.  “I’m dry!  I’m fine!  I’m fine!” he insists.  He steps away from her, then suddenly grabs her wrist.  

She gasps, her eyes flashing to his for a split-second before she ducks her face down.  She tries to pull away, but he only holds tighter.  She can feel him staring at her.  She tries to pull her wrist from his grasp once more.

“Naruto!” Lady Kushina yells.  “What are you _doing_?!”

He lets her go just as quickly as he had grabbed her.  “Oh...sorry...I’m sorry!  I didn’t… I didn’t mean to.. I don’t know what…” he attempts to explain, looking between his mother and the soaked maid. 

His eyes drift over to see the others staring at him, surprised.

“I’m sorry,” he tries, but she doesn’t look at him again.

She just nods, afraid to speak.

“Bucchi, please excuse my son.  He hasn’t been himself as of late,” his mother tries to apologize.

Hinata again nods, more vehemently this time, understanding that her own silence is bordering nearly on rudeness.

“Look at what you did, Naruto.  You scared her!” the red-haired lady seethes.  

“I didn’t mean to, her eyes-”

“Enough!” she yells.  She then turns and smiles sweetly to the maids.  “Go ahead, girls, and get yourselves dry.  We appreciate you so much for your assistance.”

They bow to the family and take their leave quickly.

“What was that all about, Bucchi?” one of them ask her when they’re out of hearing range.

“Yeah, that was so unlike him,” another comments.

Hinata shakes her head as if in confusion, even though she knows.  

He recognized her.   

The only thing that kept him from revealing her was the fact that she _couldn’t possibly be a lady_.  Not with her long, soaked hair, dripping clothes, and poor posture.

 

“What was that all about?” Kushina demanded.

“I- I...she!  I thought she was _her_ for a second!”

“...You’re still thinking about that girl!  We’ve talked about this.  She didn’t want to give you her name, she wouldn’t tell you where she was from, she wouldn’t let you see her again, either she didn’t like you, she was using you as an affair, or she was hiding a criminal background.  And in all cases, you need to stop thinking about her because it wouldn’t have worked out!”

“You don’t think I’ve tried?  You don’t know what she was like!”

“It sounded like you didn’t know what she was like, either!”

“I do!”

“That’s not what you said last time!” she negates.

It’s true that at the time, he felt like he didn’t know a lot about her.  But as the weeks went by, he still remembered everything she _did_ share, and it was enough to get a picture of her personality.  A shy girl who grew up under a strict household.  One dominated by an overbearing and heartbroken father.  A kind, caring older sister who enjoyed traditionally ladylike activities, like reading, walking amongst the flowers, and dancing.  “We talked about her family and her interests...she just wouldn’t give me any names,” he argues quietly.  “Also...I think I figured out where she’s from.”

“Naruto,” his father starts gently.  “You said that she left and that she didn’t think that she would ever come back.  It really would be best for you to try to meet other women.”

“...I know...but what if I could find her?  I’m certain that emissary from Hinokuni had the same accent as her.”

“Hinokuni is a large kingdom, much bigger than ours.  The chances of you finding her would be small,” his father reasons.

Naruto sighs.  “I know.  I know.  It’s just...hard.”

“You just haven’t gotten the chance to meet other women.  You only met her twice, Naruto.  From a larger perspective, that’s not long at all to get to know someone.”

He nods sullenly, agreeing just for the sake of getting his parents off his back.

“Let’s have another ball!” his mother suggests.  “It can coincide with the Summer Solstice!”

“Mother, I don’t want-”

“You just need to meet other young ladies, like your father said.  You’ll find that it’s much better to know the name of the person you’re dancing with,” his mother points out.  

He doubts that.  The young lady he met a month ago made it clear to him that he doesn’t need her name to feel a connection.  But maybe he does need to meet other women.  When Bucchi was standing before him, he just had this _feeling_ , and her _eyes_ …  Her hair color wasn’t blue.  She seemed smaller than the young miss.  Her figure was indeterminate.  He really shouldn’t have grabbed the maid that way.  She’s already so timid in front of him.  Now he really went and scared her.

He thinks that he can apologize to her when he sees her again.  He doesn’t want to summon her and scare her even more.

But he realizes that he never sees her.  Not like before when he would enter a room and notice her standing apart, stepping away, or busying herself with her duties.

She simply isn’t around.  

She makes sure of that.  She uses only the servants’ passageways and she keeps to duties in the servants’ domains.

And she thinks about him all the time.  

The rough of his voice, the shine of his eyes, the heat of his skin, the feeling of his hand at her waist, the angle of his jaw to his neck, his fingers squeezing her hand, the catch of the light on his hair.  

She could see him if she really wanted to...she _does_ want to.  But she doesn’t want to chance him recognizing her.  By some luck, he convinced himself that they weren’t the same, and she doesn’t know if she would be able to get away with it twice.

 

It’s a handful of days later when she realizes that she can’t hide from him forever.  She works in his household.  Unless he moves when he marries, which seems highly unlikely, then she would always risk getting recognized.  

He said he would never forget her.

What about years from now?  Would he still remember her?  

What if, by some chance, he ever caught her?  What would he think?  What would he say?  Would he be disgusted?  Embarrassed?  Happy?

What if he were happy?

What if he discovers her, and he is already married?  How would he react then?  Would he send her home to Konoha?

Can she handle seeing him get married?...  

She thinks that maybe this is what she deserves.  

She ran away from home, fighting against her fate of a loveless marriage.  And now she would be condemned to loving someone she can never have.

It’s with these thoughts that she hears that the Namikazes will be hosting a Summer Solstice ball.

It was a mistake for her to go the first time.  She knows that for certain.

But the second time?  While it was necessary for her to tell him that they couldn’t be together, she also wonders if that was a mistake, too.

Because then she wouldn’t know what it’s like to dance with him.  She wouldn’t know what it’s like to receive his compliments.  She wouldn’t know what it’s like to hear that he would never forget her.

Will he dance with other young ladies?  

Will he compliment them on their beauty?

Will he ask for a young lady’s address?

It was a mistake to go.

It would be a mistake to go again.

She can’t go again.

She told him that she left and would never come back.

So why does she keep thinking about it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> And again, thank you for the encouragement in the last chapter :) I super appreciated it.
> 
> Next chapter will be up as soon as I can write it!


	5. Deceit/Honesty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I wrote like a 3-page long kiss aannd soo, I hope you guys are into that.
> 
> Note: This chapter is slightly nsfw.
> 
> Please enjoy the somewhat overwhelming NaruHina romance!

She can’t go.

The thought is silly.

She’s a maid.  She serves his family.  She’s employed by his parents.  

She could get caught.  She could get sent home.  She would have to face all of Konoha in shame.

But what if he discovers her a year from now?  Five years from now?  Ten years from now?

It seems practically inevitable that he would eventually discover her.  She didn’t say a single word to him the last time he saw her, and he nearly recognized her.  

It’s just a matter of time, one unlucky encounter, for him to realize, stare at her in shock, reject her, and send her home.  

...Would he reject her?

The days toward the Summer Solstice Ball dwindle, and these thoughts plague her constantly.

Naruto…Naruto…

Master Naruto.

Can she handle watching him from afar for the rest of her life?  Certainly his life will move on.  Marriage, a family, the eventual lord of the province.

What’s worse?

Never knowing what could be, living safely, but constantly in fear of discovery?  

Or his rejection, returning to Konoha, facing her father, and the scorn of the rest of the town?

There _is_ an upside.  She would see Hanabi again.

Either way, she will never know anything like _him_ ever again.  Whether she stays a servant or is sent back to Konoha, she is destined to grow to be an old spinster.  At some point, she _will_ be discovered, and that could go three ways.  The first, that he accepts her, mysterious background and all.  A thought she doesn’t dwell on for its implausibility.  The second, that he rejects her but lets her stay on staff, condemning her to another kind of eternal shame, albeit one without fear.  The third, that he rejects her and sends her away, condemning her to a sad life with her father.

She would see Hanabi again.

These thoughts circulate, over and over, day after day.

The avoiding and hiding doesn’t help.

She wants to see him.

A part of her wants to know if he would recognize her.  A test of his feelings.  Can he see her past the drab clothing, or did he only see her dolled-up appearance?  

How much does he like her?  As much as she likes him?

...What if she just told him?

_What if I told him?  What would he say?  How would he react?  Would he not believe me?  Would he accuse me of stealing the gowns?  Would he hate me?  Or would he not care and still like me?_

What if she just went up to him one day when he’s alone in the library?  What if she just told him herself?  Then she wouldn’t have to wait for him to recognize her.  She wouldn’t have to wonder and wait in fear.  She could take her fate into her own hands, at least a little.

But days pass, and she can’t muster up the courage to face him.

She’s not a cultured young lady anymore.  She’s just a maid.  Her hands are cracked and dry.  Her hair hangs in tangles that can only be hidden in buns.  Her clothes are not just plain now--they’re stained, used, and worn, too.  She has no money, no family, no connections.

There’s no way he would believe her.

“Bucchi” is a far-cry from the “Miss.”    

He would probably think that she’s trying to be sly.  He would probably think that “Bucchi” is trying to pretend to be the lady he met.  

Or even if he did believe her, he would be so shocked, he would be disgusted.  There he was, spending all of his attention on a maid!  He would feel humiliated to have spent all his time on a messy girl like her.  

She can’t face him as Bucchi…

But what if he weren’t disgusted?  What if he were just happy to find her?...

 

The week of the ball arrives, and she isn’t any closer to a solution than she was three weeks ago.

“Shizuka,” she murmurs.  “I don’t know what to do.”

Her friend sits with her in Hinata’s dark room.  “Do?” she asks, encouraging Hinata to share.  She knows, though, that her secretive friend has been worrying about the young lord.

Hinata nods.  She explains her predicament as quietly and as simply as she can.

“So you want to tell him?” Shizuka whispers, just as quietly.   

“I...I think I need to...I don’t think I can hide forever.”

“...I don’t think he would send you away...Master Naruto isn’t like that…”  She doesn’t share, though, that he can have a temper.  She thinks that it _is_ possible that he would get angry, or at least feel hurt at the deception.  “I’m sorry, Bucchi.  This is all my fault.  I shouldn’t have forced you to go to the ball.”  

Hinata shakes her head.  “I could have refused.  You wouldn’t have really forced me to go.  I wanted to go.”  She sighs.  “It’s my own fault,” she says regretfully.

“It’s not...I pushed you to go.  If I hadn’t done that…”

The two girls look at each other sadly.  

“...I think the sooner you tell him, the better.”

“I know, but I’m too scared.”

“What if you told him at the ball?  He would have to believe you.”

Hinata nods.  If she told him at the ball, he would have to believe that the Miss is the same as Bucchi.  She considered this possibility, too, but it seems underhanded, like she would be trying to sway his opinion of her while dressed nicely.  

But isn’t that what she wants?

The morality of the situation is too confusing.  And she realizes, even now, she’s trying to get Shizuka to make the decision for her.  She’s being manipulative, a side of herself she never knew before.

Because hasn’t she already decided what she wants to do?  

Hinata buries her face in her hands.  “I really like him, Shizuka,” she whispers.  “I-I just want to see him.”

Shizuka doesn’t know what would be best for the shy maid, but she does know that she shouldn’t try to influence her decisions anymore.  “...Whatever you decide to do, Bucchi, I’ll support you in any way I can.”

 

The ball draws ever closer, and she only finds reasons that persuade her to follow her heart.

“I saw him pull out her glove from his pocket this morning.”

“He says his parents will have to force him to dance.”

“Oh, I’m sure after dancing with that lady all night, he wouldn’t want to dance with another.”

“Shion said he looks at her shoes every night.”

“He sighs too much these days.”

“Our poor young master.  He’s too innocent in the ways of love.”

“He has always been too trusting.”

The gossip surrounding the servants’ favorite topic fills her with equal parts longing and guilt.  How she wishes she could reassure him of her affection!

How she knows that she needs to make things right.

… _“Right.”_  

She doesn’t know what’s right.  She only knows that she wants to see him and spend time with him.  Is that wrong?

Is it wrong for her to remember the way he talked so freely with her?  The way he let her talk about herself?  The way he allowed her to share herself and keep other parts secret?  Never pressing too much, never forcing her to do or say anything..or _nothing_.  

Being with him felt so right.  How could it be wrong?

Is it wrong for her to want to catch his attention?

To want to be pretty for him?

To be the only girl to have his time?

 

“So you’re going to tell him?” Shizuka whispers as she pins the feather hairpiece in place.

Hinata nods.  “...I’m scared.”  

“Master Naruto is a good man.  He won’t hurt you.”

“I’m not afraid of getting hurt.  I’m afraid...of hurting him…”

Shizuka takes a careful breath.  “...It would hurt him more the later he finds out.”  She nods in affirmation of her own words.  “It’s best to tell him tonight....there.”  She pulls the ribbon of the dress once more for good measure.  “You’re ready.”

Hinata looks down at herself.  She’s never worn this dress before.  The blue is nearly as dark as her hair.  The bodice fits tightly, dipping down in the back slightly lower than conventions.  Soft feathers adorn the full skirt, and she can’t imagine how much dye was used for such an expensive color.  

Shizuka smiles.  “Even if you tell him, he might have a hard time believing it.”  She doesn’t know if she’s ever seen such an extravagant dress before.  It’s hard to connect Bucchi with the magnificent sight before her.  And again, she wonders about Bucchi’s past.  To have come from such wealth, why would anyone run away to a completely new country?

“Thank you,” Hinata softly says.  “Shizuka, I wanted to tell you...in case I don’t get a chance to later...thank you for being my friend.  Thank you for always cheering me up and helping me when I didn’t know what to do.”

“What is this all of a sudden?” Shizuka asks, shaking her head.  “Don’t say that!  Everything will be alright, Bucchi.  Everything will be alright.”

Hinata nervously smiles at Shizuka.  She hopes everything will be alright.  She doesn’t know what’s going to happen after tonight or how Naruto will react, but the one constant she has had since arriving at the Namikaze estate has been Shizuka’s camaraderie.  She grabs her friend’s hands and squeezes them.  “Thank you.”

“Stop that, Bucchi.  Now go!  Our young lord is waiting for you.”  

Hinata blushes but lets go of her hands.  She tentatively parts from Shizuka’s reassuring expression and steps out into the still day-lit evening.

The back of the estate is devoid of people as all hands are on-deck for the party.  More guilt floods her.  She should be in the kitchens at this very moment, helping out.  It was incredibly selfish of her to have gone that first night.  Even tonight…

She stalls at the side of the estate, once again feeling an onslaught of confusion.  She shouldn’t be out here in this dress.  She shouldn’t have come out here.  She swore to herself that she was leaving everything behind for a life of safety.  She promised Hanabi that she would never return to Konoha.

But at this very moment she is shirking her duties, _her safety_...for what?  For what exactly?  

Her heart hurts as she pictures _him._  

Everything was a mistake.  Even now, is she making a mistake?  Is she fooling herself?  So what if she has to live her life in fear of being discovered?  That’s just an “if” situation. There’s no certainty that he would ever figure her out.  As far as he knows, she disappeared that night two months ago.  

It’s better for him if he never sees her again.

She has nothing.

She’s just a manipulative, selfish, nobody girl.  

She stares down at her feather-covered skirt.  A nameless girl all dolled up.

A trick.  She’s a trick.  

She stands there longer in the hidden corner, unable to make the turn that would bring her closer to the party.  

_“Our young lord is waiting for you.”_

Is he waiting?  She heard the rumors of his melancholy, and that supposedly she’s the cause.  But she wonders if she really can be the root of such romantic heartache.

She can’t imagine Toneri wishing to see her like that.  She doubts that he ever really missed her at all.  

She wonders if, right now, Naruto has already met someone else.  Or if he really did say to Shion that his parents would have to force him to dance with another.  

Two months is a long time.

Maybe he already got over her?

She shifts her weight uneasily as she wonders what she should do.

Should she turn around and go back to work, to a safe life?  

Should she tell him?

If he really did get over her, then there is no need for her to tell him.  If he has already forgotten her, then telling him would just be even more selfish on her part.

She just needs to see him.

She just needs to know if he’s still thinking of her or if he’s moved on.

She rounds the corner and slowly steps up to the veranda.  People mill about inside as the night is still young, and many of the guests make their rounds to greet others.

She stands outside, unsure, peeking inside.  She looks around but doesn’t step through the crowd, hoping to not call attention to herself.  However, it seems that her costly gown makes that impossible as she notices people’s heads turning to look at all of the blue feathers.  She can only hope they don’t recognize her.

Unable to spy her employers from where she stands, she slowly makes her way through, keeping close to the wall.  She avoids people’s gazes, hoping that if she doesn’t return their stares, they won’t look at her.

Finally she spots them at the other end of the hall.

He stands with his parents, engrossed in conversation with another family and their daughter.  As usual, his blue eyes, tan skin, and blond hair are bright in a way she’s never seen on anyone else.  She hasn’t seen him in so long, not since that stormy day.  He’s really beautiful.  Even from where she is, she can see the energy he radiates, completely unlike the somber refinement of Konoha’s men.  He exudes cheerfulness, as if just being near him would infect her with a case of high spirits.  She can almost imagine his voice, just as bright as he is.  She wishes she could hear it.

But he’s talking with the daughter, a young lady, who’s dressed in a simple purple crepe gown.  Much more tasteful than her own flashy dress.  She wears a smile just as bright, just as warm as Naruto’s.

It turns her gut inside-out.

She can’t do this.

She can’t watch him dance with other girls.  Just imagining it hurts her chest in a way she’s never felt before.  

“Young miss-”

She turns to notice a man addressing her.  She steps back.

“You look very familiar-”

She shakes her head, sudden nerves crushing her.  She actually forgot.  She hates talking to strangers.

“Have we met before?”

She steps back again, shaking her head.  “P-please excuse me.”  She turns and rushes away rudely, escaping outside to the terrace, then down to the manicured courtyard.  

She should return to work, she should help light the evening candles, she should help wash the dishes.

But she can’t bring herself to work a ball where Naruto will find some other girl to shine on.  

He’ll forget about her eventually.  She’s just fooling herself.

She sits in a secluded garden, one Naruto had taken her through that first night.  She looks around, recalling the stories he told her about acquiring certain flowers.  These are precious memories, ones she needn’t try to relive.  But just for tonight.

Just for tonight.

She lets shadows extend around her, and she promises herself that she’ll be over him by morning.

 

“You’re not going to dance?” his mother asks.

He shrugs.  Maybe he will, maybe he won’t.  He didn’t see anyone he wanted to dance with.

His mother audibly sighs.  

“You need to find someone to dance with.  It’s only polite to all of the guests who came,” his father reminds him.

He frowns to keep himself from rolling his eyes.  He can be sassy with his mother.  Not so easily with his father.  

“I’ll go ask Lady Konan.”

“She’s practically your aunt!  She doesn’t count,” Kushina negates.

“Well, I don’t know who you expect me to dance with,” he fusses.

“I can choose someone for you to dance with,” she suddenly says, a bit of sadism hidden in her voice.

“I’ll find someone on my own!” he backtracks, to his mother’s evil smile.

“Good.  Go take a look around.  You never know,” his father encourages.

He nods and steps out into the crowd, noticing his own parents take to the dance floor.  He watches them for a moment, admiring his parents’ grace and ability.  The two make a lively match, his father’s cool demeanor a perfect complement to his mother’s Uzumaki fire.  

“Did you see that young lady in the feather dress?”

A nearby couple’s conversation filters through the music and noise.

“I wonder who she was?”

The question perks his attention.

“She looked like-”  Noise detracts from his hearing.  “-the young master was dancing-”

He looks around trying to determine who’s talking.  He steps up in a bit of uncertainty to a couple of guests.  

“Young Master Naruto!” the lady says in surprise.

He nods.  “Hello Mister and Missus…”  He can’t recall their names.

“Ayukawa,” the man supplies.  “Our family is in charge of the ports at Kishijima.”

He nods at the memory.  “Right, yes. Um…” He grasps at polite manners.  “Are you enjoying the dance?”

“Yes, we are.  We might join your parents for a dance ourselves in a moment,” the man answers.

“They dance beautifully,” his wife adds.

They watch his parents for a moment.

Naruto nods, aching to just ask them about the subject of their earlier conversation.  “My parents want me to dance with someone, too...I’ve been looking for a young lady, I thought I saw her…” he lies.  “She has blue hair, light eyes..”  He watches them to gauge their reaction.  He’s far from disappointed.

“Oh, yes, we saw her, didn’t we, dear?” Lady Ayukawa says.  “See, I knew it,” she exclaims, as further realizations come to her.

The man looks thoughtful.  “She may have stepped outside.”

“She is certainly eye-catching.  A young man tried to talk to her, but she brushed him off,” the woman recalls with an amused smile.  “You had better hurry, young master, before someone else gets to her.”

He can feel blood rushing to his head, adrenaline running under his skin, his chest tight with combined disbelief and hope.  He quickly bows with a word of thanks and jogs outside. He looks out from the terrace, scanning the grounds, half-expecting to see her dancing form like the first night.

She’s not there.  

He gulps back the disappointment and descends the steps.  The tall trees and hedges cast their long shadows on the ground, creating dark corners that could easily hide anyone.  He resists scratching his head and messing his hair up.

 _She_ can’t be out here, right?  Were they talking about someone else?  She can’t possibly be here.  She left a long time ago.

He looks back toward the ballroom, crowded with people here to have a good time.  Except that he’s not having a good time.  It’s hard to forget someone when people are _telling_ you to.  He never had an easy time with doing what people tell him to do.

Never good with rules, with expectations, with boundaries.  

Why should tonight be any different?  His parents can’t actually expect him to just find someone, right?  He thought it a stroke of fate when he met that young lady.  She was pretty, completely unaware of his rough reputation, curious about _him_ and not his money, very obviously of some sort of noble birth...she checked out in everything his parents could have asked for, she was perfect.

He thought she was perfect.  She held not only similar ideas to his own about social ranks, but she was _way_ more progressive in thought, almost entirely unorthodox regarding family birth...it was fascinating.  Yet everything else about her was so traditionally ladylike, almost too predictable.  Dancing, reading, walking in the gardens.  Easy to please.  Certainly that must be true when she seemed easily amused by him _and_ easily forgiving of him.

He turns around and heads to his gardens.

Maybe she’s there.  Most likely she’s not.  

He remembers her smile the most.  The way she just seemed to grow happier as the night progressed during that first meeting.  How he showed her this plant and that flower.  Two months ago, that tree was full of peach blossoms, and she looked at them with _such_ wonder.  

He’ll never forget _that_.

Nor how he could _see_ the shyness and propriety melt off of her as she got to know him.  And that smile of hers on their last meeting.  How they danced and danced and danced…

He intakes a sharp breath of air.

He forgets how to breathe.

He stares what feels like forever at the lady sitting at the ledge of one of the lotus pools, her finger caressing the pink petals, a luxurious skirt of dark, shimmery feathers trailing down.

A step toward her breaks her contemplation, and she looks up, blinking in shock.  Her lips part, her light eyes widen.

She hardly has time to stand, to react at all, when he rushes toward her, his hands briefly taking hers before sliding up to hold her forearms.

“What are you doing here?” he asks breathlessly.  “I thought you left!”  Yet there’s no accusation in his tone.  Only surprise, a hint of wonder that brings a smile to her face.

She registers the firmness of his grasp, only to realize that she’s holding his arms just as tightly.  “I-I couldn’t.  I tried, I really tried, but I couldn’t go back...”

He stares, the words barely registering as he takes in the last rays of the sun on her skin.  

“Forgive me...I had to see you again…” she whispers, suddenly shy under his attention.

He smiles.  She _had_ to see him again.  He tries to stifle his smile from growing any wider.  It wouldn’t be a very becoming look.  But the happiness brightening her own expression is too much.  To know that she reciprocates every feeling he holds is a joy he’s never felt before.  He sneaks his thumbs at the skin just beneath the ends of her gloves.  

They gaze at each other for longer.  He’s really here in front of her, as if he knew she’d be here.  She takes in every bit of him.  The exact shade of his skin, the shine of his blue, blue eyes, the way his brows have strands slightly darker than his blond hair, the dimple on his cheek, his lips…

He should have said something in reply by now, but he has no words.  It’s his default with her, never saying or asking the right things.  He’s heard stories of people falling in love with looks and regretting it, cautionary tales from his mother and father that he _never_ thought would happen to him, but so be it.  He hardly knows her.  That’s fine.  He’s always broken the rules.  His story will be one to join the many.

It’s a relief to allow it, to feel it.  

The softness of her lips on his. 

The clench in his heart finally freeing from the confines of his chest, and he can breathe again in slow, slight, aching pulls that make his body feel heavy but his extremities light.

She tightens her hold on his forearms, fuzzy clouds filling her head, a fluttering in her gut, tingles sparking through her legs.  In all scenarios of them meeting again, and not one had been like this.

Wilder than even her wildest dreams.  

She lets her hands slide up his sleeves to his shoulders, fitting herself more easily in his arms that hesitantly come to rest around her back.  But there they settle, his fingers pressing solidly into the material as his lips brush against hers once more.

Another gentle kiss sends a flush through him from his head to his toes.  She doesn’t pull away, so he lets them meet for a fourth, a fifth, and he loses count when her fingers start to tease at his collar and his core starts to twist.  He lifts his head, opening his eyes to see her lashes unwillingly flutter open.

 _We were kissing_.  The thought is unbelievable, and yet, here they stand, closer than she’s ever been to anyone, their bodies only a breath away from each other.

“I missed you,” he says, barely above a whisper.

“I missed you, too,” she replies.  

It doesn’t take much to give in to her sweetly dazed expression, to lean down and kiss her again.   

And it doesn’t take much for her to lean in to his promised warmth.  To let his heat spread from her cheeks, through her arms, and down to her toes.  It makes her brows pinch together; it makes her fingers feel like grasping onto something solid, to pull at the cloth of his vest; it makes her feel like tippy-toeing to reach out for something more, for his something more.

She brings him closer, and he embraces her tighter, feeling the rise of her shoulder blade and the narrow of her waist in his hands, chest shuddering against the knowledge of her bosom pressed to him, tasting the softness of her lips, only to suddenly find the softness of her own curious tongue.  Hesitation slips away.  He loves this.  He loves the way she looks.  He loves the way she feels.  He loves the way she holds him and kisses him, and the way she lets herself be held by him.  He loves it.  He loves her, and isn’t that fine?

Isn’t it fine?  To love him?

She doesn’t want to let him go even as she quickly realizes that the kiss is moving too fast.  In all propriety, she should not be clinging to him, encouraging him by keeping him pulled close.  But once it ends, once the kiss ends, he’ll have questions.  So she leans into him for another kiss.  

Just for now.

Just for another minute of him.

Just to memorize the way his arms feel wrapped around her.  To commit to memory his intimate breath and the solidity of his shoulders.  

To experience this kiss.  

It should feel shameful, but it doesn’t.  One meeting leads to another, and another, and any thoughts of guilt are forgotten.

A match strikes within her, lighting her in anticipation.  She can’t breathe, but she doesn’t want to.  It’s his hands and his pressure, steadily gaining weight upon her body.

She feels wanted.

Sensation settles deep, building and building.  It’s something she’s never felt before, coursing through her veins, through her heart, racing.  The taste of his lips and tongue, the sound of him breathless, the feeling of his hands holding her tightly.  

She wonders if he feels it, too.

“Naruto…”

His name from her airy voice, a breath upon his lips, fills him with a desperation unlike any other.  

Everything about this is so wrong.  It’s so wrong and it feels so good.  How he wishes he could say her name in return.  

He gasps hard, trying to regain his sensibility.

She kisses him again, and he leans into it instinctively.

“Wait…” he murmurs.  He tries to breathe.  “Wait…”  He pulls up reluctantly, only to see her, pressing against him, her eyes lidded, her cheeks rosy, her lips swollen.  His heart shoots into his throat.  He can’t possibly ask for her name right _now_.  Any man with common sense would know that.  He _needs_ to kiss her.  It’s the only thing he _can_ do.  

He kisses her.  Over and over.

Her cute breathy sounds fill his mind, and he keeps going, just to earn that sound of approval.  A heavy tightness gathers at his trousers, a worrying distraction that splits his morality between pressing forward and stopping altogether.  So he stays against her lips, unable to bring himself to separate from her nor engage her in a completely illicit act.

The kiss itself feels amazing enough.  Not just her lips.  Her body.  Her breath.  Her voice.  Her hands at his chest and neck.  He’s never known anything like her.

He feels his brain melting, all sense of time and decency lost.  He can only tell that shadows surround them, concealing their shameful act.  Twilight chased dusk’s last light away before either of them realized, and he thinks neither of them care.

How long has he been gone?

Gone with her.

 _Oh_ , he wants to be gone with her all night.

She feels his hands sliding around her waist, up her sides, across the bare of her back, one to her neck.  She registers _him_ pressed against her, hard.  It’s too much.  She knows she messed up, remembering the awful lesson she suffered through in preparation to marry Toneri.  She finally fully realizes what she’s doing to Naruto.

But…

She whispers his name again.

He squeezes her closely.

She can’t get enough of this.  And she’s luring him on, closer.  It’s unbelievable to her that she can entice him so.  She can feel how he kisses her harder when she sighs or gasps.  She can hear his hum of satisfaction when she presses against him.  

It’s altogether too shameful.  

She should feel ashamed.  

She should.  He doesn’t even know who she really is.  But she can’t possibly tell him _now_.  Not when she desires him so, and he so obviously reciprocates.

Just for tonight.

Just for one more night!

She twists her hips, feeling the pressure of his ardor against the heat pooling within her.  

He shudders, breaking the kiss to let out a gasp, almost a groan.  

It’s something completely unknown to her, and she kisses him again, wondering at the mystery between them.  She wants more from him.  He gives her shades of light and dark she’s never experienced before.  Feelings so pure and honest; feelings so wrong and deceitful.

It fills her with suspense.  

His fingers reaching through her hair, keeping her lips locked on his.  His pelvis pushing against her, rubbing against her.  His breath hot on hers.  His arm wrapped around her waist.

She steps back against his leaning weight, and he presses forward.  She realizes he’s walking her back, directing her somewhere, right when the back of her legs hit the bench.  Her knees, weak from their tryst, easily give out.

He stands above her, his chest and shoulders heaving.  He bends down over her, connecting their breath again.  His hand threads through her hair, pulling her pins, her hairpiece out, until she can feel her long hair spilling down her back.

It’s such an intimate act.  

Ladies never wear their hair completely loose around gentlemen.  And she’s never had her hair touched by a man before. She gazes up at him as he smooths his hand down her hair.

The air feels heavy between them.

“Miss…”  He doesn’t know what he wants to say.  He wants something.  He ardently wants something.  He needs relief.  He needs her to comfort him, to give him her sweetness, her softness.  Everything about her excites him, thrills him, and he needs her to do something about it.  He needs to be closer to her, he just wants to know her.  Everything about her.  Inside and outside, he wants her to be his.

He wants to love her.

To leave himself with her, irrevocably, permanently.  To receive her, to have her.

To see her.

Feel her.

Every part of her.

He sits beside her.  They kiss, but her lips and tongue aren’t enough.  He slides his hand over her feathered skirt, feeling the angle at her hip, the round of her thigh, testing her boundaries with him.

She gasps away from his kiss, and he watches her look down at his hand.

He waits for her reaction to his intentions, hoping that her heavy breaths, shivering body, and misted eyes are an indication of how much she wants him.

Nothing about this is right, but he was never really a good boy anyway.  

If she agrees, he can take her back to his chambers.  They can get to know each other without worry. It can be just the two of them.  Just her and him.

“Do you know what you do to me?” he murmurs to her.  Not just tonight, but ever since they met.  He'd been dreaming of kissing her since that second night, and this, this is far better than he thought a kiss could ever feel like.

She turns away, hiding her face from him, her long hair sliding over her small, pale shoulder.

He thinks to encourage her back into his arms when the sight of her strikes him as...odd.  His gaze traces over her thick, inky hair, and when she turns to peek at him, he watches her lowered eyes.  Before he can process any of it, he’s whispering a name.  “Bucchi?”

She looks up in alarm, her eyes wide.

His hand retracts from her leg.  “You’re...Bucchi, aren’t you?”  His eyes, straining in the dark, searches her face, looking at her as if he never saw her properly before.

She wants to deny it.  She’s not Bucchi.  But she’s not “Hinata,” either.  She hasn’t been in a long time.  She’s not anyone.

He reaches for her, but she suddenly stands.

She doesn’t want to be Bucchi.  She wants to be someone else.  Someone who’s right for him.  She steps away.

He doesn’t move.  A belated expression of shock seems to be dawning on his face, and it makes her feel so ugly.

So ugly.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.  “I didn’t mean to… I didn’t...I didn’t…”  Her heart breaks at his dumbfounded stare.  And she flees.

 

She shuts the door of her room and curls up in her bed.  She stifles her sobs in her blanket and wishes the dark could swallow her whole.

 

He sits in the garden, suddenly alone.  One moment, heat and attraction were nearly suffocating him into madness.  The next moment…

He’s not sure what on earth happened.  

All he knows is he was kissing the maid.

But logically he can’t make sense of it.  They seem so different.  Bucchi, so timid and silent.  The Miss, alluring and fascinating.

How could he have known with one always looking away from him and the other looking like Heaven’s jewels?

Still, the Miss and Bucchi are obviously one and the same.

_Obviously._

He wants to hit himself for being so ridiculously, stupidly blind.

He didn’t know a maid could be so eye-catchingly gorgeous, so heartachingly desirable.

He blinks himself into awareness.

She ran away.

No, he let her run away while his slow-as-a-turtle brain processed.

And he’s still processing.  Like the fact that every time she ran away, he never found her because he never thought to check the servants’ quarters.  Or that she, Bucchi, never looked at him because she didn’t want him to recognize her.  And that she never told him her name or where she’s from because she didn’t want him to know that she’s a maid.

Or did she want him to figure it out?

She said things like “comb” and “bath” because…

His cheeks flame worse than during the kiss.   _Oh...nooooo…_  She wasn’t being timid because she _is_ timid.   _Oh NOOOOO…_  Realizations hit him too quick, and he’s hiding his face in his hands, slumped over, in terrible embarrassment.   _She was right there while I was…no wonder she couldn’t look at me!...  And then she was combing my hair…_  He thinks he might die from his heart spasming from such severe embarrassment.

There was that time, too, after the rainstorm…  For a second he’s filled with self-righteousness at having been correct that day, until he remembers the way he grabbed at her.

Embarrassing memories, just one after another flood him.  

He was pining away right in front of her before that second ball.  Just laying out all his insecurities for her to see.

What was she thinking during all of that?

 _Oh gods_.  He doesn’t want to know what she was thinking.  What she must think of him!  He never acted suave in front of the maids because he never thought he needed to impress them.  Kimiko and Shion have always been sort of like his confidants, more like family than anything else.  He pretty much grew up with them around.  So he acted no different in front of Bucchi.

The way he was sighing and moping in his bedchambers _right in front of her_.

It’s mortifying.

His fingers run through his hair with the stress.

His mind flashes back again to when he last saw the maid.  The way he grabbed her arm that day!  That really _was_ her, and he just manhandled her thoughtlessly, and he’d never have done that to a woman, anyway, but to _her_.  To _her_.  In front of _her_.  

How could she still like him even after that?

He sits there, frozen, staring at the ground.  His sight slides over to her shiny hairpins and feather hairpiece left on the bench.  He picks it up, remembering the vision she presented when he found her here earlier.

He kissed her.  They kissed passionately, in fact, and if he hadn’t finally recognized her, they might have gone even further.

He stands in panic.

He needs to see her.  She ran because she thought he must have rejected her.  He’s still hopelessly in love with her.  He needs her to know that.

He runs out of the gardens and dashes toward the servants’ quarters.  He runs through the halls of their bedchambers.  He has no idea if she’s in any of them, so he calls her name aloud, hoping she might respond.  

Nothing.

He runs up to the kitchens.

“Master Naruto!”  Servants call his name in surprise.

“What do you need, sir?”

His intrusion completely halts their work.  Everyone stops what they’re doing to look at him.

He looks out-of-sorts.  His hair is noticeably mussed.  His shirt is wrinkled.  Their stares focus in on the hairpiece in his hand.

“Are you alright, Master Naruto?” a cook asks.

Naruto’s gaze darts anxiously from face to face, none of them the one he wants to see.  

“Master Naruto?”

He takes a moment to calm his breath.  “...I’d like to speak with..Bucchi.”  He tries to tame his feelings of embarrassment, which are threatening to explode across his face and color his skin a telling red.  “...Has anyone seen her?”

The servants look around.  One of the cooks hollers her name out, as if she might be hiding in another room, which, honestly, everyone half-expects with the young master in the vicinity.  Murmurings rise when she doesn’t appear.  “She could be helping to clean the rooms?”  “Maybe she’s in the scullery?”

“Sir, I think I might know where she is,” Shizuka says, speaking up.  She nods assuredly to the fellow staff.  “I can take you to her.”

“Thank you.”  He follows the maid to a quiet hallway, far from the kitchens.  He’s surprised when the maid abruptly turns around.

“Master Naruto, so...she told you?”  The maid looks at him worriedly.

He stares at her for a second to collect his thoughts.  “She didn’t tell me anything…”

Shizuka looks at the feather hairpiece in his hand.

“This is Bucchi’s, isn’t it?” he asks.  “I need to speak with her.  Do you know where she is?”  Impatience threatens to leak through, but it’s obvious that Shizuka is his lover’s friend.

“I thought...I thought she was with you, sir,” Shizuka replies quietly.

He keeps himself from grimacing.  “She was...and then, I thought maybe she returned here.”  

Shizuka pauses and then nods, turning back around.  She leads him down a hall he hadn’t ventured into and to a shut door, where she stops and knocks.  “Bucchi, are you in there?” She leans her ear against the door.  When she doesn’t hear a response, she goes on, “I’m coming in, okay?”  She turns the door handle and looks at Naruto pointedly.

“I’ll...wait out here.”  He can’t just go into a woman’s room, even if it’s the servants’ quarters.

“I apologize, Master Naruto.  I will try to bring her to you if she is in here,” she whispers.  She turns the handle and enters, shutting the door behind her.  In the dark, she can barely make out the lump of her friend on the bed.

“Bucchi?”

“...Shizuka…”

She approaches carefully to her bedside.  She wants desperately to ask what happened, but now is not the best time.  “Master Naruto wants to speak with you, Bucchi.  He is waiting right outside for you.”

Hinata turns her head in confusion, and then rolls over to face her friend.  She doesn’t believe it.  She was crying in humiliation and shame just a moment ago and only managed in the past few minutes to slightly calm herself.  “...Really?”

“Yes.  Are you able to talk to him?  He really wants to talk to you.”

Hinata touches her swollen eyes.  She’s still in her dress, but she must look like a complete mess.  Not to mention her long hair is all over the place.

“What happened?  Were you crying?” Shizuka asks, realizing the state that Bucchi is in.  “Are you okay?  I can try to ask him to leave if you are indisposed.”

“I should...I should talk to him.”  

Shizuka frowns, wondering what happened.  Bucchi said that she would talk to him, but instead, it seems that something went wrong.  She helps Bucchi sit up and get out of bed.  “Are you sure?”

“Y-yes, I’m sorry, Shizuka, for the trouble.”  Hinata does her best to fix her hair, but it’s useless.  She tries to wipe her face clear, but she knows she must look awful.  Crying never looked good on her.  She decides to change out of her gown at least.  Slipping out of the tight-fitting material is another call back to reality.  She’s not anything fancy.  She’s just a maid.  She cracks the door open, keeping her head bowed, and catches sight of his shoes.  Shame engulfs her once more.  She made him go looking for her again.  And this time, he found her.  “M-m-master Naruto, I’m so sor-”

“Don’t!” he interrupts, a bit too loudly.  He sees her shoulders tense.  “Don’t call me like that.”  Hearing that from her makes him feel sick.  And why won’t she look at him?  Even if she’s a maid, it’s been clear to him that she wasn’t always one.  She has no business calling him that way, not after everything.

“N-naruto, I’m sorry f-for deceiving you.”

“No.  No, no, don’t apologize, Bucchi, I understand.”  He looks up from her bowed head to see Shizuka standing awkwardly behind her.  “Thank you, Shizuka,” he says as a way to acknowledge and dismiss her.

She nods quickly, rubs Bucchi’s back, and scampers away.

Naruto waits for her to leave before taking a deep breath.  He turns his attention back to the young woman before him, the dream that’s been haunting him, his lover.  All he can see of the beautiful lady is the top of her head, her long hair cascading over her strange coat.  She seems so much smaller. Even still, it’s her, but the difference is so incredible, he feels now that he really doesn’t know her, that he has no business touching her at all.  “...Come with me.  Where we can talk somewhere private,” he invites quietly.

She nods, still unable to meet his eyes.

He navigates them as quickly as possible through the halls, and she follows at a respectful distance.  To anyone watching, no one would know of their relationship.  He opens the door to his bedchamber, quickly realizing the irony of the situation.  He had been thinking of bringing her here earlier in the evening to _get to know each other_.  Now he really means it.

His entrance immediately alerts Kimiko and Shion.  “Master Naruto, you’re back early. Is anything the matter?”

Many things are of matter right now, but first, “I need to speak with Bucchi, alone, please.  And I don’t want any interruptions.”

Their eyes shift to the shy maid in confusion before they leave the two of them alone.  

When the door is securely shut, silence settles between them.  

Hinata’s hands twist together anxiously.  She doesn’t know what to expect now.  He said he understands, but does he?  What does he understand?  She glances up at him in curiosity.

“You’re finally looking at me.”

She drops her gaze again.

“Bucchi, no...Miss.  Please.”

She looks up at him, slowly meeting his eyes that are surprisingly soft.  It encourages her to stand straighter, to relax her grip on her fingers.

“What’s your real name?”  He steps closer, carefully.  “Won’t you tell me, please?”

She doesn’t know his intentions.  If she gives him her real name, he can certainly send her back to Konoha.  She shifts uncomfortably as he draws closer.  It would be rude of her to step away from him.  “M-my real name is of no importance to you, N-naruto.  I’m just..just a maid...I lost my name when I arrived in Uzushio.”

“Then, where did you come from?”  He doesn’t like that she still looks scared.  What makes her think that he’ll hurt her?  “Please don’t say you’re from Towel,” he tries half-jokingly.  

She bites her lips in shame at how she tricked him twice.  “I-I’m sorry.” She lets her gaze drop, but he quickly steps up to her, his fingers at her cheek.  

“Look at me.  Don’t look away anymore.”  He trains his gaze on hers until her light eyes are on him, too.  “Nothing’s different to me.  I still see you.  And, it’s me.”  He pauses to see if she understands him.  “It’s just me.”

Just him.  Hinata studies him, matching his words with his expression.  He doesn’t sound or look angry. Concerned, definitely, but not really upset.

“I just want to know you.”  

She can feel herself breathing easier.

“Bucchi, Miss, do you know?”

She looks at him in confusion.  When he doesn’t go on, she asks quietly, “...Do I know…?”

He smiles at hearing her voice, calmer now.  “I don’t think you know.  That even now, I want to kiss you.”  He watches her blush.  “But I don’t know you.  And you don’t know how much I _want_ to know you…”  Now that he can see her face clearly again, and so, so close, close enough to kiss, he finds it hard to focus on anything other than her soft skin.  Her makeup looks smeared...from tears...but that only makes him want to kiss her fears away.  It would be so easy to just continue where they left off.  It’s frustrating to think that he’s the only one so affected, that she can leave him so easily, that she really _did_ leave him, even after their tryst in the garden.  It’s not fair.  Not fair at all.  “Is it the same for you?  Do you want to know me?”

“Yes,” she whispers.  “Yes, Naruto, I want to know you, too.”  She says this as earnestly as she can.

“Then...tell me about yourself.”

She nods and swallows her hesitation.  Nervously, she takes his hand, letting him feel the roughness of her fingers that her gloves had concealed all this time.  She avoids his gaze, not wanting to see his reaction to her work-worn hands.  “I...I’m from a land of great forests.  I disguised myself, ran away from home, boarded the trading ships, and...and ended up here.”  She takes a deep breath, readying herself for his questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :D
> 
> Thank you to all of you have been encouraging me, especially last chapter where I was pretty much at the awful end of my studies and in a particularly stressful time at work. Your guys' thoughtfulness brightened my days.
> 
> Aannd I passed my Portfolio! I got my Masters and successfully completed the training program I was in for the last two years! yayyyy cheehoo life's rainbows and butterflies.  
> I celebrated by writing pure smutty smut (Shared Vows: Work at Home) hahaa
> 
> Hopefully this means more time to write fanfiction :DD
> 
> Sorry, this is a really long note...but  
> I'd really appreciate input on what, like 3 readers, have suggested I do -
> 
> What Do You Guys Think.  
> Should I upload my fics to ff net????? That website is messy, and I don't get how it works, but are there readers/writers who like that site more????? Would it be easier for any of you??? Would any of you appreciate that? I've been trying Tumblr out, but there's astonishingly so many negative people there, it's kinda a toxic place??, so I'm scared about trying ff net???  
> Please, if any of you have an extra minute to share your thoughts on that topic, let me know, I would really appreciate it.  
> If I don't get feedback on that, then I'll assume ao3 is the happiest place x)
> 
> Anyway, 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please look forward to more romance...


	6. Firsts / Future

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I haven't updated this story since June, like 7 months ago! But I found the inspiration to finish the chapter I started :D
> 
> Since I first started this story for the NH Week 2019 Tumblr event, I thought it would be appropriate to kick off the NH Year 2020 event with this story, too!
> 
> January's themes are Firsts / Toward the Future, Vision
> 
> I'm hoping you can catch the themes of Firsts and Future in this chapter :)
> 
> Please enjoy the Naruhina!

She thought she was ready to talk to him.

She wasn’t.  She has no idea how to tell him her reason for running away.  No matter how she phrases her answer in her mind, it sounds selfish.  It sounds unreasonable.  She sounds silly and ungrateful.

She didn’t want to marry the heir to the prominent Otsutsuki clan?  Because he treated her like a doll, dressed her up and only wanted to look at her?  

Yes, but, thinking about it a year later...she feels ashamed.  It was her duty to fulfill the responsibilities as the eldest child, and she unthinkingly ran away without concern for the consequences.

“Miss…?” he asks, waiting for her answer.

“I…” she tries, but the words are lost on her tongue.  

He sighs.  Another piece of her past she won’t share with him.  She said she would tell him about herself, but...she isn’t.  She’s hardly saying anything.  It’s frustrating.  “What about your father and your sister?”

She shakes her head.  “I don’t know how they’re doing.  I think they are okay.”

He processes her answer, realizing that for whatever reason she ran away, it had nothing to do with her family’s wellbeing, land, or assets.  “They must be worried about you, right?”

Hinata stares fixedly at the floor, slowly wilting in shame.  “Maybe… My sister knew that I was leaving.  She encouraged me to run away…  She was always braver than me.  More clever.  It was her idea that I bring these gowns to sell for money.  This ugly coat was her idea, too.”  She fingers the coat thoughtfully, still finding a bit of amusement in her sister’s antics.  “My father… I don’t know if he cared.”

“..He must have cared that you disappeared.”

“Maybe.  Maybe he thought it a relief.”

Naruto stares at the floor, unable to answer.  His parents have always cared about him.  Sometimes he thought they cared too much.  There were definitely times when he was younger when he wished they wouldn’t bother him.  He doesn’t know how to respond.  “...You don’t want to try to contact them again?  At least let them know that you are safe?”

“...I do...I want to...but I can’t let them find me…”

“Why?”  

She looks up at him sadly.  “It would...it would be shameful...”

Silence rises between them.  

Naruto finds himself full of questions, but she seems unable to answer any of them.  _Why did she run away?  Did she do something?  Was she threatened?  She didn’t know what would happen to her when she ran away, so…_  “Were you scared?”

She nods.  “Everything happened so quickly that before I could think about it, it just seemed like it was too late to turn around…  And then, I met Kurenai, and Shizuka, and…”  She glances at him once more.  “I met you,” she says, softer.  “I wonder if I...if I did the right thing.  I worry about my sister a lot.  But then I wouldn’t have been able to meet you if I had stayed.”  

Despite her secrets, her words fill him with warmth.  “Even though I don’t know what happened, I’m glad I could meet you.  Whether it’s luck, fate, or chance...I’d like to think..that we were meant to meet.”

She looks at him in wonder.  He’s so trusting, and she doesn’t deserve it.  She hasn’t done anything to earn his confidence, yet he keeps his heart open to her.  She needs to try her best.  For him.  “Naruto,” she whispers.  “The truth is...”  Her breathing locks with anxiety.  She doesn’t know how he’ll react.  But she pushes through.  “...I..I was to be married.”

_Married?_ Realizing that she’s finally telling him more about herself, he listens closely.

“You might think me foolish...or silly...too romantic…”  She takes a deep breath before continuing.  “..He scared me.”  She can remember the way he would watch her. The way he always stood within her proximity at gatherings or at balls, even if she moved around the room.  Even if he appeared to be talking to others, she felt constantly under his leering gaze.  “The way he..looked at me...or..or touched me...it made me feel so dirty...and, and...h-he never let me speak.  He didn’t..didn’t like it when I talked.  I just couldn’t imagine living with him…living in his household.  And I...I was afraid that he wouldn’t let me receive visitors, that I wouldn’t get to see Hanabi.”  Ironically, in a terrible twist of fate, she condemned herself to isolation, far away from her only sister.

“Hanabi is..your sister?” Naruto asks.

She looks at him wide-eyed, realizing that she accidentally gave her sister’s name away.  She nods.  

Naruto frowns, thinking about the type of man she was engaged with, a sense of disgust edging up on him.  “You didn’t have a say?”

“N-no.  My father, he..he wanted to marry me off as soon as he could.  He didn’t think anyone else better would offer.  I was...a burden to him… And...”  She sighs. “They were rich.  One of the three wealthiest clans in our nation, much richer than my family...”

“So that’s when you ran away..?”

“Two days before the wedding,” she quietly answers.

_Two days!_  Naruto can’t begin to fathom the amount of chaos her disappearance must have caused.  Not just for the fact that she went missing, but also for what would likely have been a high-profile marriage.  A rich lord, able to use his money to get anything he wants, and the province’s beauty.

He grimaces, a sudden, unexpected flare of jealousy poisoning his gut.  It’s irrational, knowing that she’s right beside him, but finding out that she could have been someone else’s sends a anxiety clamoring through his nerves.  She said that this man was...looking at her.  And touching her.  The disgusting thought makes his throat close up.

“I-I can’t go back.  I would only bring more shame on my family.”

“You’ll stay here with me,” he says, faster than necessary.

Hinata lets his decisive words run through her, the firmness of his tone a relief.

“You belong here now.”

She tentatively smiles at him.  “...I would like Uzushio to be my home now.”

“It is,” he says earnestly.  “Remember how I promised to show you our beaches?”

She blushes at the memory of their second meeting.  _He remembers._

“We can do that.  We can go this season together!  My family has a summer residence down south.  We just have to inform the caretakers.  We can go as soon as...in a fortnight, I’m sure!”

She wants to go along with his enthusiasm, to trust that everything is alright.  But she can’t.  “Naruto,” she starts softly.  “I’m a maid.”

He tsks.  “No, you’re not, you’re-”  He stops, unable to finish his idea.  “That doesn’t matter to me.”

“Maybe not to you..but..to your parents?”

He shrugs, shaking his head.  “It will be fine.  They’ll understand.”

She looks at him skeptically.

“Don’t worry,” he repeats, more seriously this time.

She searches his expression, looking for reassurance.  

It’s easy to find in his steady gaze, unwavering despite how utterly displeasing her appearance must be right now.

She finally nods.  And smiles.  “Thank you,” she whispers.  Even with the relief of his acceptance, her heart feels tight.  Heavy with the weight of her appreciation for him.  And at the same time, heavy with fear that the fragile love between them may still so easily break.  “Thank you,” she repeats quietly, earnestly.  “I was so afraid..that you wouldn’t...”

He grips her hands firmly.  “Don’t be afraid to tell me anything.  I want to know about you.”

She silently nods, studying his honest expression.  

“Even if it’s not right now.  I want to learn everything about you.”

She blushes deeper, accepting his sincerity.  _I should tell him my name._   She knows that he deserves more from her, but she finds herself still hesitating.  “...If I...if I tell you my name-”  She continues to hold his gaze, tracking his wide-eyed surprise, then the hardening, warm determination taking its place.  “-please...don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t tell anyone,” he promises.  

She can feel the name at the back of her throat.  It feels almost foreign, the air that builds on her tongue.  She hasn’t heard or used it in months.  She breathes deeply, firming her resolve.    _There’s nothing to be afraid of._  She finds his steady gaze.  “Hinata.”  The syllables rest between them, their distant familiarity settling into her.  A piece of her that has been missing for a long time.  A piece she hadn’t realized she was longing for.

“Hinata,” he repeats, watching her bite her lip as he tests her name.

She never knew she could feel so complete in another’s voice.

He smiles at her shy demeanor as he repeats her name once more.  He thinks he could say it again and again, and he would never tire.  How many times has he wondered in the last two months?  How many times has he wished to call her name?  “Hinata, I have wanted to know your name for so long.”  He leans closer, letting their lips brush together lightly before she seals the distance.

 

Naruto can’t remember a morning when he was ever as awake as he is now.  He actually woke up before Kimiko pulled the curtains open.  

And his thoughts immediately wandered to Hinata, and what she must be doing now.  Likely helping to clean the ballroom--something he’s still having trouble reconciling in his mind.  

The “Miss,” who stole his senses away into restless yearning, has been under the same roof this entire time.

What’s worse is, knowing that she’s here doesn’t quiet his mind.

He had insisted on preparing a room for her.  She refused and returned to her quarters, claiming that it would be strange for her to suddenly be treated as a guest.

He told her he would come to her in the morning.  She blushed and said she would continue her duties, that it would invite poor gossip for him to call upon her that way.

He sighs as he prepares to meet his family for breakfast.

He can’t wait for all of his extended family to leave.  

Maybe he won’t wait.  He’ll try to get his parents alone as soon as possible.

_They’ll agree.  They have to agree._   

“Is something bothering you, Master Naruto?” Shion asks, breaking his silent contemplations.

He glances at her as she dabs cologne on his wrist.  “No,” he lies.

She shares a look with Kimiko, and he knows that they know that he’s lying.  Of course they would know.  Usually he’s a chatterbox of complaints and excitements for the day.  They probably knew as soon as they found him sitting ready at his dressing table...in the dark.

Even he knows he’s too easy to read.

But he doesn’t share his thoughts with them.  

He tries to converse at breakfast with his family members, but his thoughts stray to Hinata.  How nice it was to finally learn her name, how warm and soft their good night kiss was, how he wishes he might have the chance to kiss her again soon.

Noisy laughter from his aunts draws his attention back.  

He realizes he might not have time to find her, not with the expectation that he spend every waking moment with his cousins.

“I hardly saw you last night, Naruto.”  Karin’s commanding voice grabs his attention back to the table.

He notices his parents’ unhappy expressions out of the corner of his eye.

They thought he ran away.  He kind of did.  But when he returned to them after Hinata took her leave, he informed them of his occupation.

  

_“I was with a lady.”_  

_“Oh?  And who was this lady?” his mother prodded_.  

_“Her name is-”_   “Please...don’t tell anyone.”  _“-uh,” he faltered._   _He promised her he wouldn’t tell anyone._

_“Don’t tell me you forgot to ask her name.”_

_“I got her name...I just can’t say it here,” he replied quietly._

_“Why not?” his mother questioned._

_“I just can’t, Mother.  Please,” he voiced in sudden embarrassment.  “I can tell you and Father later?”  At his parents’ concerned expressions, he continued, “I would like to introduce her properly, too.  She already returned home for the night, but I plan on...calling on her tomorrow.”_

 

His parents unwillingly gave in, not completely trusting his word.  Afterall, he had been gone for the better half of the night, and by the time he had returned, the majority of the guests were leaving.  

“I met a lady last night,” he replies to his older cousin.

“Oh really?  A lady actually showed interest in you?” Karin laughs.

He smiles and nods.  “She’s more refined than you, in fact.”

She scowls at this comparison.  “Aunt Kushina and Uncle Minato, it looks like he has caught quite an illness.  What lady dares to take on the responsibility of caring for my dear cousin?”

Naruto shoots a glare at her sarcasm.

“Indeed, Karin, we are wondering the same,” Kushina says.  “We hope to meet her soon?” she asks, directing the question at Naruto.

He hopes so, too, but not in front of everyone else.  “She’s rather shy,” he manages to deflect.  “I would want to introduce her to just you and Father first.”

“A lady willing to entertain you is rare.  Be careful to not neglect her,” Karin teases.

“I don’t plan on it,” he replies, realizing that this is his chance to get out of entertaining his family.  “I asked her to expect to see me later today.”

“Then you won’t be joining us in town?”  Karin sighs as he shakes his head.  “Fine, but I expect to learn who this lady is, too.  I may need to warn her about what she’s getting herself in to.”

Usually, Naruto can banter with Karin endlessly, but he’s not in the mood for it.  He just wants this long breakfast to be over.  He just wants to quickly get his parents’ approval so that he can start courting Hinata seriously.

He can just imagine the smiles and intimate glances she would show him once he finally gets to take her out.  He can imagine her hand in his arm as he leads her around town.  He can imagine everyone’s surprise to see him escorting such a gorgeous lady.  

His mental absence is noticeable to everyone at the table, who look at each other knowingly.  To everyone else, it seems the young Namikaze is in love again.

 

He heads over to the ballroom as soon as he’s left alone.  As he expected, Hinata is there on her hands and knees, scrubbing scuff marks from the tiles.  Dark blue hair tumbles over her shoulders, curtaining her face. Her odd coat completely covers up her graceful arms and neck.  She looks like a little animal.

But he knows what’s behind her barriers.  And he wants nothing more than to pick her up off the floor and take her far away from such manual labor.

It’s hard to just watch.

His presence soon gains attention, and servants stop their work to greet him.

He notices Hinata stop, as well, but she doesn’t come up to him the way the others do.

Getting her alone with him is a lot harder than he thought it would be, especially if he’s telling all of the servants that he, in fact, doesn’t need anything, that he was just stopping by to thank everyone for their hard work.

He peeks at her to find that she’s giving him a small smile of acknowledgment, and he realizes that might be all that he’ll get out of her today.  

After exhausting all options for small talk with the staff, he reluctantly excuses himself.

 

He realizes that he likely won’t be able to get his parents alone until it’s time to retire.  So he has a whole day to himself.  Usually he would use his time to study or help his father, but with family over, there’s no expectation that he work.

So he decides to shop for her.  She needs dresses after all, if he wants to take her anywhere.  He heads into town, careful to be out of sight of his family, and orders lengths of pastel cottons and patterns for her.  He gives the tailors estimates of her sizes, keeping his blush at bay.

He imagines where they’ll go together when the dresses are completed.  

Everywhere in town.  He’ll show her off to his friends, make them see how wrong they were about him, that even someone as impulsive and ignorant as him found the one.

But mostly he’ll keep her to himself.  Slow drives in the countryside.  If she doesn’t know how, he can teach her to horseback ride.  Or how to shoot an arrow.  Romantic picnics in fields of flowers beneath the large tree he used to climb as a child.  They’ll gather enough blossoms to fill the carriage.  Tie them in bouquets for her room.  Sunset promenades on the beach.  Collect shells to fill empty glass bottles.  He’ll show her his country properly, open her eyes to sights beyond her imagination.  And she’ll look at him the way he first saw her from the steps of the ballroom.

He’ll make her happy.  She’ll never have any reason to doubt him.  He’ll treat her right.  He’ll always be on his best behavior.  He’ll make her forget she ever lived without knowing him, he’ll never leave her lonely, he’ll wrap her up in a dream the same way she does to him.

He eagerly waits for nightfall.

 

Naruto has them sit in their private drawing room.  He takes a seat across from his parents and breathes in slowly.  “At the ball last night, I met her again,” he starts.

His parents’ eyes narrow as they understand his meaning.

“Please listen first before you say anything.”  At their silent frowns, he continues.  “I talked to her.  I learned about who she is.”

Minato sighs hard.  “Naruto-”

“Her name is Bucchi,” he interrupts, and he realizes adrenaline is racing through his body.

His mother’s eyes widen.  “...Bucchi?  You mean the maid?!”

“Yes, but no!  Bucchi isn’t actually a maid!”  His parents’ reactions seem worse than his was with their expressions of shock.  Or was his reaction that bad, too?  “She had to run away from home!  Her family was going to marry her off to a man who treated her like garbage, and she had no choice but to leave!  She found her way here, and Kurenai hired her to work for us.  And then I met her at the ball, and…”  He pauses, seeing his mother’s eyes turning up to the ceiling in disbelief, his father looking at the floor in contemplation.  “It’s true!  She is well-spoken and she can dance.  You both saw her!”

Kushina looks at him.  “You’re too easy to fool.”

“No, you don’t understand!”

“I do.  She’s fooling you, and you are completely falling for it!”

“How could she have learned to dance so well if not for her upbringing!  Her gowns, too, are ones she brought from home to sell just in case!” he argues.

“Even so, she is a maid now!” Kushina states with finality.  “It was her choice to leave home!  She has no family background now!  You can’t marry a maid!  We have no means to verify her story, and even if it is true, she was betrothed to someone else!  How do you know that she wasn’t already married!  How do you know that she didn’t run away from a husband!  How do you know that she isn’t just using you to get her old life back!”

“I know she is telling the truth!  If you just talk to her…”  He turns his attention to his father pleadingly.

But the look in his father’s eyes is apologetic.  “I’m sorry, Naruto, but your mother is right.  It isn’t a suitable match.  There are too many unknowns.  We’re just looking out for what is best for you and our family.  She could be trying to take advantage of you.”

“She’s not like that,” he argues vehemently.  “If you would just meet her, you would understand.”

“In a case like this, we ought to fire her,” Minato replies in an even tone.

Naruto stares at him in shock.  “No..you, you can’t do that to her…”

“She was seducing you while neglecting her duties,” he explains.

His father’s statement is preposterous to Naruto.  “She wasn’t _seducing_ me!  I was the one who tried to keep her from leaving the ball!  She’s not even supposed to be a maid!”

“We pay her for housekeeping!  She’s a maid!  She attended our ball when she should have been helping the rest of the staff!” his mother reiterates heatedly.

“You can’t fire her!”  He stands up in his temper.  “She doesn’t deserve that!  She didn’t mean to meet me!  _I_ approached her _first_!”

“At a ball that was explicitly for you to find a potential marriage partner!  All of the servants knew this!” Kushina argues back.

Naruto stares at them, slowly realizing that they aren’t going to budge on their views, the shock of it plummeting him to a reality he wasn’t aware of.  “...Don’t fire her.”

Minato shifts uncomfortably.  “Sit down, Naruto.”

He sits.  He stares at them pleadingly.  “Please don’t fire her.  She’ll have nowhere to go.  She’s a good person, she works really hard, I know, even the other maids say so, you can’t fire her.  She never complained about her work, she’s not trying to use me, that’s why she never told me about herself, she didn’t want me to find out, it’s just that yesterday I figured it out on my own and then I made her tell me everything.  Don’t fire her.”

“Naruto.  We can’t keep her,” Minato states.

He feels everything in him clenching, his stomach turning in unease.  There has to be a way. “You can’t fire her, you can’t fire her!”

His parents stare at him silently.

“Don’t fire her!”

“It’s protocol,” Kushina explains, more quietly now.  “A relationship with a servant is improper. Not just for our household, but think about what the other nobles would say.”

“I don’t care!  And all of this is my fault!  Not hers!”

“That’s true that you are partly to blame,” his father agrees.  “We will have to arrange a marriage for you.  Bucchi will have to work elsewhere.”

“No!”  Naruto stands up again.  “No!  I love her!  I’m never going to meet anyone like her again!”

“You don’t know her!  You’ve hardly talked to her!”  Kushina stands, too, meeting his temper.

“I _know_ her!  We talked _a lot_!  But I don’t care if she ran away from home, I don’t care if she was betrothed, or married, or not!  I don’t care about any of that!  I know her now!  I love her!”

“You don’t know what you’re saying.  Love isn’t just an overnight feeling,” Kushina says exasperatedly.

“I’ve never felt this way about _anyone_!  Ever!  I know what I’m feeling!  And also!  It’s not something that just happened overnight!”  Frustration threatens to overflow. They don’t understand.  “You can’t fire her!  If you do, I’m going with her!”

Kushina scoffs.  “You don’t mean that.”

“I do!  I’ll marry her on my own!”

“And what will you do?!  Where will you go!  You wouldn’t be able to support her on your own!  You wouldn’t get anything from us!” Kushina snaps.

“Naruto!”  His father’s scolding silences them.  “Listen to yourself! You’re acting like a brat!  You’re going to leave us? For a maid you met three times?  You’re being ridiculous!”

“I love her!”  Naruto glares at his father, heatedly challenging him to deny the truth of his feelings again.

His father stares back, letting a moment of silence pass, returning his own rising temper to his usual calm.  “We won’t allow you to marry her.  But we don’t have to fire her.”

Naruto grimaces, a poison congesting in his gut at the finality in his father’s voice.

“However only on this condition.  You are not allowed to see or summon her.  If you are caught with her, even around others, we will fire her.  She will be kept to work in the servants’ domains.  She will not be allowed in any of the common spaces, and she will not be promoted to any higher ranks.  If you truly care about her wellbeing, Naruto, then you must stay away from her.  She’ll have nothing and no one to take care of her otherwise.”  Minato watches his son glare at the ground.  “Naruto, do you understand me?  If you are caught anywhere near her, I will get rid of her.”

Naruto jerks his glare back up at his parents.  He can’t believe it.  Now, more than ever, he understands what Hinata meant when she said names are meant to just selfishly uphold status.

“Do you understand?” his father repeats, his voice rising authoritatively.  

“Yeah,” he mutters, the syllable gritted out.  He turns around, storms out of the door, and slams it shut.

What can he do now?  How can he get his parents to accept her?  How can he just not see her again?  He _has_ to see her again!

_Hinata...I’m sorry…_

 

Kurenai pulls her to the side, right as she is readying for bed.

Hinata follows her into a large linen closet.

Kurenai turns to face her.  “Hina.  What have you done?”

She looks up at the head maid, nerves already gripping her.  She’s been preparing herself for the worst all day.

“Master Minato himself has given me directives regarding your future here.  If I have any suspicion that you are involving yourself with the young master, whether it be just a short conversation or if you’re in any vicinity of him, you will be let go.”

She doesn’t say a word as Kurenai explains everything regarding her guidelines.  She doesn’t need to.  She’s certain that Kurenai knows exactly what must have happened between them.

It’s a sinking, crushing feeling.  Even though she had mentally readied herself to be sent home, it’s still terribly disappointing.  She didn’t realize how hopeful she had been until now.

She nods and silently returns to her room.

She knows that she couldn’t have expected marriage.  She knows that she brought this on herself.  She knows that it was amazingly generous of her employers to keep her on staff.

She still cries.

 

Naruto refuses to eat with his family.  He doesn’t care if his cousins question his whereabouts, and he doesn’t care what his parents tell them.  He knows that he wouldn’t even try to fake pleasantries, he wouldn’t be able to stand being around them at all.  The focus surrounding him for the past few months has been solely on finding him a bride, and their teasing would just set him off.

So he excuses his personal maids from duty and stays in his room alone.

He writes a note.

He ventures to the servants’ quarters through the back at mid-morning, when he knows everyone is up and about.  He leaves the note under her blanket, hoping that she’ll find it, and slips back to his room.

 

Despite the night before, Hinata finds that the day feels just like any other.  Even before the ball, she had been keeping herself away from Naruto and all common areas.  It isn’t hard to stay busy in the servants’ domains. There’s always work to be done.

But her heart lies heavy, even with the lack of uncertainty it used to carry.

Now she knows that this is permanent.

This is just how her life will be.  

Shizuka gave her time, she kept a bit of distance, until finally, she approached her during a break, sitting beside her in a quiet hall.

Hinata breaks the silence, realizing that she owes Shizuka more than just a quick word of appreciation.  She deserves her honesty, too.  “I’m sorry for making you worry about me.”

She shakes her head in disagreement.  “I’m your friend.  And here, that practically makes us family.  Of course I will worry about you.”

For the first time in many, many hours, Hinata feels a genuine smile pulling slightly at her lips.  “I told him about myself.  He accepted me.”

Shizuka’s eyes widen.

“But Master Minato and Lady Kushina don’t approve.”

Shizuka sits silently, at a loss for words.

“It’s to be expected.  I actually thought they would fire me.  But they’re keeping me.  They are really merciful…”  She hates how she feels tears choking her throat, threatening to fall.  She feels ungrateful.  Perhaps she’s always been ungrateful.  Changing her social status didn’t humble her the way she thought it had.

“Oh, Bucchi…”  Shizuka wraps an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

“I should appreciate them more.  Things could be so much worse for me…”  Tears fall, and she thinks this likely won’t be for the last time.

Shizuka just hugs her, lets her cry until she calms again.

“Shizuka, thank you…”

She hums a disagreement.  “Come, let’s go wash your face.”

Hinata nods, recognizing her luck, trying to acknowledge everything that she has, a supportive friend, kind employers, memories of _him_.

 

She just wishes she could have told him the truth of her feelings first.

That night, she turns her covers and draws her legs into bed.  She feels paper beneath her thigh, and pulls out a small sheet.  When she squints at it and realizes there’s writing on it, she quickly goes to her door and cracks it open for light.

 

**_Dearest Hinata,_ **

**_Meet me in the gardens tonight when everyone has turned in.  I’ll be waiting.  Destroy this note as soon as you can._ **

**_~N._ **

 

Her chest tightens with surprise, her heart beating hard.

His handwriting really is as awful as she remembers.  The message itself is short, not at all romantic in the way she has seen love letters imagined in novels.  Still, she wishes she could keep it, she wishes she could treasure it forever. But she rips it to tiny pieces after instilling “Dearest Hinata” into memory.

She shuts her door again and leans against it, breathing hard with indecision.

She could get caught.

For all she knows, it could be a trap.  But she’s certain that only Naruto could have written it.  The penmanship is too poor to be anyone else’s. Unless his whole family writes that way, which seems unlikely.

She holds the pieces of the letter tightly in her hand.  She wants to see him.  If only just this once.  For a last time to communicate everything she wants him to know.

That she’s thankful that he accepted her.

That she’s grateful to his parents for keeping her.

That she’s glad she got to meet him.

That she loves him.

 

She debates between wearing her catskin coat.  If she wears it, there’s less of a chance that she’ll be spotted.  But if she wears it, she could still be easily recognized.  If she doesn’t, others may not recognize her if they just glimpse her passing by.

When the halls are quiet, she sneaks out, hair tied back into an easy bun, bare arms wrapped around herself to shield her from the night cold.  She stays close to the walls, then runs across the courtyard to the tall hedges.  She steps quietly, slowly, checking carefully around each corner.

She sees him, leaning back against the edge of a fountain, staring at the ground.  Illuminated by the moon’s glow, he appears solemn and regal, at odds to his usual demeanor.  Different.

“Naruto?” she calls out quietly, exposing herself to his view.

He looks up, eyes softening.  “Hinata,” he murmurs.

She steps quickly over to him, and he meets her, their hands joining once more.  He doesn’t flinch at feeling her rough skin.  His eyes don’t stray to her worn clothing.  His gaze doesn’t leave hers, and she feels his acceptance deeply, a swelling emotion in her bosom.

“I’m sorry.”  His voice breaks in just the short words.

She shakes her head.  “Don’t be.  I expected this.  I am just grateful that I can still work here.  Your parents are too generous.”

“No, they’re not,” he says, tone clipped.  “All they care about is status and money.  They don’t understand.”  His hands squeeze hers, his thumbs rubbing over her skin.

“...That’s just the way it is,” she replies softly.  “They have already done so much for me. It would be selfish and ridiculous if I asked for anything more from them.”

“Hinata…”

Despite everything that’s happened, she finds herself smiling, basking in the simple joy of having her name on his lips.

“I’ll get them to understand, I’ll figure out a way,” he says vehemently.

She nods, not because she thinks he will, but because she appreciates him so.  “Thank you for trying.”  She takes in his earnest gaze, the serious slant of his brows, how he focuses on her, waiting for her.  The warmth in her heart is overwhelming. “I love you, Naruto.”

His eyes widen, her whispered words fluttering through him.  He suddenly feels short of breath. He can’t let her go.

He pulls her closer, their lips meeting softly.  It’s a numbing sensation, running through his limbs, blanking his mind.  When they part, he looks into her gentle eyes and whispers her magic back.  “I love you, Hinata.”

Her light eyes shine, her smile bunches her cheeks, her sweet lips slightly part, and he settles his own joy against hers once more.  Like wind rising, his body feels light, he could float away. 

Soft kisses gain an urgency, a desperation that clouds her mind.  She pulls back to breathe, to control herself, to refocus. She slowly blinks through the haze, finding his lidded eyes.  “Naruto,” she starts.

“Hinata?”

She should say goodbye to him.  She should tell him everything, her entire list of gratitude, her farewell.  That she’ll be okay.  That she can continue her life happily, _knowing that they_ _could have been_.  That that’s enough for her, more than enough for her, more than she ever deserved out of life.

She can’t say a word of anything she planned.  Only, “I love you.”

His small smile is brief before he repeats the words back.  “I love you.”  And his lips are warm against hers, each moment pulling them together, his arms circling around her.

And as close as they are, she can’t help but feel like reaching for him, can’t help but feel like his sensation won’t be enough until she’s drowning in him.  

It’s in a moment of heat, the tipping point toward something more, something risky that burns in her core, that she finally murmurs against the warm skin of his throat, “I’m not supposed to see you.”

His breaths, heavy and wet at her neck, slow.  “...Yes, you are.  _I_ need to see you.”

“Naruto…”  She turns her face in, breathes in his scent, the musk of cologne.  He’s too good to be true.  She doesn’t deserve him.

“I love you, Hinata.  My parents are a couple of idiots, but I’ll make them understand.”

She hides her smile in his neck.  “...Don’t call them that.”

“Mm.”  Just the hum of his voice makes something in her _pull_.

She holds him tighter, and his kisses continue against her skin, albeit with less force than before.

“And you, don’t give up on me.”

She sighs at his breath, nodding, letting herself slip into his simple promises.

 

Mornings after their nightly rendezvous find her bleary-eyed, moving unthinking with her orders.  She’s glad that the work requires little mental engagement from her.  No one seems to notice how often she yawns, how dark the skin beneath her eyes are, or how she sometimes pauses during the day to let her eyes close.

To imagine him.

To imagine his strong arms around her, his warm voice at her ear, his comforting hand in hers.  Imagine his heartbeat against her temple, his pulse at her lips, his breath on her tongue.

It’s always innocent at first, pleasant talks on books he shares with her, flowers picked and decorated in her hair, promises of travel and dreams of their future he weaves into detailed plans...

She doesn’t mean to betray her employers’ kindness.  She doesn’t mean to defy their authority.

Still, she finds herself sneaking out into the quiet of nightfall, under the moonrise, only the traveling stars giving witness to how she feels most alive in his embrace.

She knows that it’s wrong, but his bright, joyful smile banishes all shame.  His welcoming warmth, his gentle kisses, his sweet, whispered words keep her returning to him.

And, unwittingly, she finds herself only falling deeper in love, realizing that she doesn’t want to give him up, doesn’t want him to move on, only wants him, desperately wants him, to fall deeper for her, too.

Lips kiss-swollen and senses blurred, they let their hands wander, let their curiosity find satisfaction in discovering a little more of each other--the skin of his lower back, the pulse at her neck, the dip of his collar to his shoulder, the warmth at her inner thigh.  

It’s touches that make them kiss harder than they mean to, make their bodies move together as if crying for each other, make them hold each other in a promise of never letting go.

She curls her fingers into his hair when he leaves marks atop her breasts, easily hidden, secret remembrances beneath her coat during the day.  She holds back whimpers that he still manages to coax from her as he pulls at her bodice, his tongue venturing lower, dipping into the dark valley of her cleavage.

How he murmurs, a frustration at the edges of his tone, “I love you.”

And she knows it colors her voice, too, when she replies, “I love you, Naruto.”

“Let me love you.”

“Mm.”  She knows what he wants.  They’ve been running full speed, head-long toward a sheer drop-off into trouble.  She feels powerless to stop it, caught up in his gravity, circling a dream of their fantasized future together.  She wants his love more than anything.  But… “We shouldn’t…”

“Hinata…”  He brings his attention back to her lips, soft and sweet, like the rest of her.  “I just want to love you.”  He tries to convince her every night, with suggestive actions and words, but tonight, tonight he’s more candid than before.  He was forced into another arranged meeting with some girl, the third one, that ended with his mother screaming at him to try harder.  Except that he can’t.  These girls bore him to death, exhaust him with their chipper excitement, all a horrid contrast to his own sour mood. His impatience for night is hardly contained.  His cup overflows with unfulfilled need.  He wants her to finally catch him.

She twists under his hot breath, shivers running through her.  “Naruto…”

He shifts her closer, makes sure she feels him.  “You know what you do to me, right?”

The bump in his trousers presses against her, and she’s known of his desire for many nights now.  She knows, too, of her own, endless, dark attraction to him.  Her hand trails down, her palm flattens against him, and despite her strict upbringing, the lewd feel of him thrills her, unlike anything she could have imagined of herself.

He’s hard.  His love for her, love for her attention, love of her warmth, of her form, manifesting in a bodied lust.  He groans as her fingers mold toward his base, squeezing what she can. 

“You’re big,” she whispers, and she takes in every detail of his pained expression.  Each night forces her to acknowledge her selfishness.  Tonight is no different, she wants all of him.  She’s fascinated by him, by his proclaimed love for her, by his reactions to her as they’ve grown ever closer.

“Do you want to see it?”  His eyes are dark, challenging her, pushing her to be more daring.

She nods, only slightly, but it’s enough for him to slowly unbutton and pull it down to his knees, for her to bite her lip in trepidation, for him to suddenly grow shy.

“I’m sorry, I just...it’s hard to control myself.”  He nudges his forehead against hers, presses a kiss at her temple.  “I want to know you, Hinata.  And I want you to know me.”

“I want to know you, too, Naruto,” she assures.  “You can show me.”  She rests her hand at his wrist and pulls his hand away.

The weight of him brushes against her as he deepens a kiss, their tongues twirling in a dance they both know intimately.

She slowly caresses his length with her fingertips, up to the head.  He’s surprisingly smooth, his skin unexpectedly hot.

His breath catches, his jaw dropping against her lips, only to engage her harder, as if his life depended on her kiss.

She daringly presses her fingers around him, tugging upward, and he shudders, his whole body trembling.

“Hinata…”

It amazes her.  She’s never seen him so consumed, so completely enfolded in emotion.  She finally looks down to see the piece of him in her hand.  Her eyes widen, and she grips him tighter, pulling up, smoothing back down, his rigid girth almost too wide for her enclosed fingers.

He gives a short groan, his control hanging by a thread as her pleasuring quickens.  He scrambles for her, his thoughts fraying, the only thing registering is that she’s touching him, touching him, touching him.  He peeks a look at her--her angelic countenance focused on his manhood--and she’s in far too much clothes.  He needs to feel her, needs to have her.  He begins pulling at her bodice.

She squeezes him, rubs him harder.

And just like that, he’s thrown back into helpless sensation.  He struggles, overwhelmed by the stimulation that he needs, _needs_ , more of, so enraptured, and he can’t think.  Can’t form anything beyond her hand burning his wood, building his fire, hotter and hotter.  “Hinata…”

She watches his closed eyes, his scrunched cheeks, his pulsing length, and she wonders.  “Does that feel good?”

_“Does that feel good?”_   Her whispered words, her torturously sweet tone, burn him up, worse and worse.  He grunts, fighting for himself, presses his lips to hers, wishes he could swallow her sweetness, wishes he could have her whole, and he pushes her skirt up, his hands seeking her skin, her skin, her skin.

She stiffens, her whole body locking as he tugs her clothing aside, his fingers unhesitatingly, roughly pressing into her moisture.  “Naruto!”

He gazes at her, searching her exotically pale, soft eyes for permission.  He pleads her name, “Hinata…”  His heart beats hot in his face, his fingers slide against her folds, finding her dew upon his skin.  “Let me love you.”

She recognizes enough of herself to know that she wants to let him in.  She wants to be irrevocably his, and him, hers.  It feels as if the weight of their forbidden relationship, every hidden meeting between the trees, all their longing thoughts during the day, have led them both here, to engage in a melding of hearts and heat.

His finger glides intimately, trailing a piercing fire along her skin as he teases her entrance.  Even his gaze burns her to her core, his whispered words, “I love you, Hinata,” are secret embers falling and flaring within her.  She trembles, quivers before him, everything about him turning her intangible.

She realizes.

She had given into him since long ago, steadily and assuredly taken his love into her very skin, love impressed upon her from his sturdy hands and fervid kiss.  She had long ago allowed him to make love to her.

Truly, she has since only begged him for his love with whispered declarations of devotion and quiet sighs of passion.  And here before his open vulnerability, she’s enflamed in _need_ to give, too, as honestly and trusting as he’s ever done for her.

She reaches for him, kisses him tenderly, whole-heartedly, and breathes upon his skin, “I love you, Naruto, I love you.  Let me love you.”

He sucks in a breath, his heart skipping, tripping over itself, never finding its pacing as she pulls down her sleeves, her eyes shying away.

Demure, enchanting.  Full, soft skin glowing warm in the dark, more and more revealed as cloth peels away, bare curves and shadowed dips enticing his imagination, bindings fall away, beautiful lines shaping her round and slender.  

He’s panting.  Shirt on the ground.  Nearly stumbling back in effort to find the bench.  Takes her onto his lap.  

Soft thighs settling on his.  Uncharted smooth skin.  Feminine scent heady.

Ripe.  Suckling, playing, her shape perfect between his lips, soft and hard on his tongue.  Pliant in his hands. 

His name breathy in the air.  Gasps, short cries.

Her pelvis pressing, rubbing on him.  Blood rushing.

“Hinata.”  Her name is the only coherent string of syllables his overly stimulated mind can string together, but it’s heavy with his intention and emotion.

She pauses.  Her clouded gaze meets his.  Her lips press to his, her tongue curls with his, her body curves against him, flawlessly with him.  

He loves her.  She was sent to him, by the threads of fate or his lucky stars, she was meant for him to love.  He can’t imagine anything else but having her like this forever, he can’t fathom this incredible, blessed moment not lasting his lifetime.

Her small hand, warm, wraps around him.  She lifts up on her knees, then rubs his tip against her.

She’s slick on his skin.  Anticipation locks his chest, steals his breath.

Warm.

Soft.

A little warmer, softer.  Then tighter.

He buries his face in her breasts, her heavy panting barely audible over the snapping of electricity in his veins and the slamming of his heart.

She’s hot.

He’s dragged, steadily sucked, sinking.

Deeper.

Hotter.

Her breath hitches, short vowels fill the air as she takes him in.

His hands travel over her bare skin when she pauses, around her shoulders, the slope of her spine, in the arch of her lower back, the ridge of her hips, the curve of her waist.  He’s thoughtless, filling his senses continuously with her.  Beauty he has seen, but never felt before until now, silken in his arms, against his body, around his…

She’s all-consuming, wrapping around him, molding to his shape and size, more than perfect, her body designed for his adoration.  And within her exquisite form, joined in her mystery, he’s voiceless, neither praise nor her name on his tongue, no words to articulate his awe or appreciation.

He finds her lidded eyes, glossed in simple starlight.

She gazes helplessly back, lips parted, breath rushing in and out to meet his, closer and closer until there they connect, too.  She’s gentle, he’s untethered.

He eats her sweetness, hungry for the honey of her kiss.

Her body flinches, trembling around him, every little movement tightly winding him up.

He can’t have enough of it.  He tastes the scent of her skin along the smooth cream of her neck, thirsts for her at the warmth of her pulse.

Her pelvis tilts heavier, her body jerks arched in his arms, she cries as if shocked.

He cups her breast, fingers sinking in, pushing her nipple up for his descent, puckered stiff against his lips, upon his tongue.

She pulls back, he follows, she surges against him, he sucks harder, plush bottom swivels in his lap, his piece swells within her, she moans...a sound that calls him to her, that has him pushing up however closer he can.  She grinds back, lifts up--

Jolting sensation leaves him gasping against her skin.

She shakes in his arms, easing him snugly back in, whimpering sweetly, his length moving with each tiny rock of her hips, his heart and mind knotted to her.  She gradually pulls up once more, then flows down around him.

His hands grip the bench.

She gradually strokes him slick, slowly up, steadily down, slipping around him again, and again, puffy walls parting and comforting him into her body...her moving body, her lush form, breasts pressed to his chest, small shoulders locked, slender neck exposed, eyes closed in emotion, emotion he’s giving her, emotion she’s taking from him, emotion they’re sharing together, emotion solely for them.

He’s hers, entirely enveloped in her tenderness.

Her rhythm paces even, but his heart hammers faster, racing for her pleasure.

The garden conceals them in shadows, yet inside he burns, building hotter, brighter, more vibrantly than he’s ever been before.  Color floods him, heat saturating him, simmering out in groans and moans, gasps and choked breaths.

His hips push up to meet her, his desperate body seeking hers sooner, yearning toward her beyond the confines of skin.

She leans into him, his shoulders and chest taking her grip and weight.  Lips meet, sucking, tangling humid with mindless desire. Her pace accelerates, and he shudders against her, only to kiss her harder, deeper.

He’s longing, urgently awaiting her, a pressure boiling for how much he wants more.  More of her nectar, sweet from the depths of her being, more of her divine ambrosia, soft in her skin and touch.

Endless delight.

His name in her breathless moan a striking aphrodisiac.

Every part of him strains to consume her, have her sweetness melt him through and through, inside out.  Dissolve him, gather him up, and collect him in her, renewed as pure and consummate energy.

He kisses her in heightening madness, an insanity erratically flying to blow free from his heart.  Clambering, wild love magnetized to her unceasing lead.

To her hot cries wet on his fizzing skin.  Her plush curves soft on his larger body.  Velvet flesh sharpening his pulsing lust.  All of it magnifying to an addling pitch, seizing him up in intense degrees, the edge of bursting arrival.

Nails pinching, sighs choking, body trembling and fluttering, she splits him open, unbinds him.

His whole being blaring, rushing, surging into her releasing embrace, and he holds her closer still, sealing himself to her with every full, thudding beat of his heart.

The thick haze in his mind begins to clear.

Warm relief suffuses him, running from his face, down through his veins.  He squeezes her settled, collapsed weight, buries his face at her neck, basking, savoring, finally soothed. 

Finally...finally, his.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope your reaction is the same as mine..."uh oh" haha 😏  
> To answer a possible question, there's no birth control.
> 
> For Firsts, obviously First Love and First Time. For Future, how Naruto and Hinata envision a future together that isn't happening the way they want.
> 
> It was so refreshing to write this story after being knee-deep in white lilies angst for the past so many months!
> 
> Thank you for reading :)


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